Cyclists

Lord Quinton: asked Her Majesty's Government:
	Whether they will take steps to ensure that bicycle users abide by the Highway Code.

Baroness Crawley: My Lords, the Highway Code and road traffic law apply as much to cyclists as to anyone else. The police can prosecute cyclists who drive dangerously, carelessly, ignore traffic signs or signals, cycle on the pavement or commit any other offence. Such offences carry maximum fines ranging from £2,500 to £500. Enforcement of the law and the Highway Code is a matter for the police and the relevant authorities.

Lord Quinton: My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for her reply, which in its abstract way is extremely encouraging, but does she feel that the system of penalties is effectively applied? As an elderly resident much given to walking about central London, I constantly perceive riders on the pavement and persons popping through traffic lights that are against them and driving up one-way streets. Perhaps I should declare a kind of medical interest, in that my wife was bumped into by a cyclist going the wrong way up Bond Street—at least it was a good street—and as a result she suffered a fractured pelvis. I will say of the offender that he said he was sorry, but that was rather by the way.
	The law is not very effectively applied; I know of one person who, when a cyclist was going along the pavement, said to a nearby policeman, "Oughtn't you to do something about that?" The policeman replied, "The road is very crowded". That seems to me to be turning a blind eye to serious offences in the most unsatisfactory way.
	Finally, I draw the noble Baroness's attention to the special needs of the blind in this regard. They are peculiarly vulnerable to the offences committed by cyclists, particularly when they are crossing with one of those beeping lights in their favour and the cyclist offends against the rule against going through red lights.

Baroness Crawley: My Lords, I very much agree with the noble Lord that there is no excuse for cyclists to commit offences such as riding on pavements, although cyclists sometimes tell me that they feel safer in some of the traffic conditions that they experience if they ride on pavements. However, there is no excuse for such offences.
	There is a penalty of £500 for causing a serious accident by riding on the pavement. The noble Lord talked about how well that penalty was applied. The Government recently brought in the policy of fixed penalty notices so that people who ride on pavements or break the law as cycling offenders can be served with a fixed penalty notice instead of a prosecution. That is certainly having an effect in reducing the number of such incidents. In addition, community support officers have recently been given special permission to apply the fixed penalty notices, so there is more activity and application is certainly increasing.

Lord Howarth of Newport: My Lords, can my noble friend tell the House that the kind of boorish and anti-social behaviour from cyclists, which has just been so vividly related to the House by the noble Lord, Lord Quinton, forms part of the Government's agenda in their admirable efforts to promote respect between members of society?

Baroness Crawley: My Lords, that is absolutely right. I agree with my noble friend that the cycling fraternity knows that it must abide by the Highway Code, as do other road users. The Highway Code has recently been extended to the relationship between cyclists and drivers. As well as cyclists being aware of their responsibilities, drivers are also now being told in the Highway Code to be aware of other vulnerable road users, including cyclists. I agree with my noble friend, and I say to the noble Lord, Lord Quinton, who asked the original Question, that there was a decline in the number of pavement accidents between 2000 and 2003. The number of casualties arising from accidents on pavements has gone down from 87 to 51.

Lord Steel of Aikwood: My Lords, is the noble Baroness aware that Members of your—

Lord Grocott: My Lords, the Cross Benches first, then the Liberals.

Lord Marsh: My Lords, that seems a proper priority. Does the noble Baroness agree that there could be a major problem if the police really took this seriously and spent a lot of time on it? They would do nothing else in central London but prosecute cyclists. Is not the problem largely that the cycles are totally silent? If they had bells on them, as they used to, at least you would hear them moving. Is that not the problem?

Baroness Crawley: My Lords, I shall take that suggestion back to the department. To put this slightly in context, I must say that the number of prosecutions of cyclists in England and Wales in 2004 was 830. The equivalent number of prosecutions for motoring offences in 2003—I do not have the 2004 figure—was 2,325,553.

Lord Steel of Aikwood: My Lords, I always give way to seniority. Is the noble Baroness aware that Members of the House who, like me, have offices across the road are more in danger of being injured by cyclists when using the pedestrian crossing outside than by motorists? It is a serious problem. Can she give the House any figures for cyclists unfortunately killed in accidents in recent years? In addition to the suggestion made by the noble Lord, Lord Marsh, would it not be a good idea to insist that cyclists should wear fluorescent yellow shoulder belts during the daytime, at night have lights both front and back, and wear protective head gear at all times?

Baroness Crawley: My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Steel, on that last point. He asked for the number of cyclists killed and injured over recent years. The number killed in 1995 was 202, with 23,623 injured. In 2004, the number killed was 127, and injured 15,876. The numbers are coming down, but obviously there is no room for complacency. The Leader of the House answered a question on the state of transport facilities and facilities for pedestrians around the Westminster estate recently, and the House authorities are aware of the problems faced by noble Lords trying to get access to the House.

Baroness Whitaker: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that because of—

Lord Grocott: My Lords, we are in the ninth minute, and we have had one from each of the four quarters, so let us move on.

Iraq: Reconstruction

Baroness Williams of Crosby: asked Her Majesty's Government:
	In view of the decision by the Government of the United States to seek no further funds for the reconstruction of Iraq, what funds they have committed so far for that purpose and what funds already committed remain unspent.

Baroness Amos: My Lords, the UK Government committed £544 million for humanitarian and reconstruction assistance to Iraq from 2003 to 2006. Over £460 million has been spent to date. That includes our share of European Commission aid and our contributions to the UN and World Bank trust funds for Iraq, as well as our bilateral programme of support to the Iraqi Government and people.

Baroness Williams of Crosby: My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for that Answer. First, why has less than half of the £131 million allocated for reconstruction in the Basra region in southern Iraq been spent, when the commitment runs out this year? Secondly, given that neither the electricity, water nor oil infrastructures are back to the levels they had reached shortly before the invasion of Iraq, what plans do the Government have to produce more funds for reconstruction after 2006?

Baroness Amos: My Lords, I was not aware that less than half had been allocated with respect to southern Iraq. If I may, I will take that figure away and look at it, because it does not quite match with the information that I have been given.
	With regard to infrastructure, the position is not quite as the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Crosby, has set out. For example, electricity capacity is being added through reconstruction projects. Demand, of course, far outstrips supply. I know that the House will be aware that, now that the Iraqi economy has opened up, people are buying far more electrical goods, which is pushing up demand. In addition, as quickly as we are increasing capacity, the insurgents are targeting supplies and reducing that capacity, so there is an issue of security.
	The House will want to know that sewage and waste-water treatment plants are now operating. There were none prior to the conflict. Some 1.25 million more Iraqis have access to potable water than before the conflict, and 9.6 million more have access to a sewerage system. Healthcare spending is more than 30 times the pre-war level. It is important that we remember that the access ordinary Iraqis had to some of those services was almost nil before the conflict started.

Baroness Rawlings: My Lords, mindful of the importance of education in the reconstruction of any country, what role do Her Majesty's Government intend to play in the planned UN education projects in Baghdad and the potential Iraqi National Accord conference?

Baroness Amos: My Lords, the noble Baroness will know that we support the UN in many areas, and education is one of the areas that we have been supporting. More specifically, 3,746 schools have now been rehabilitated, and a further 439 are in progress. On the conference mentioned by the noble Baroness, if I may, I will write to her.

Lord Anderson of Swansea: My Lords, whatever the legitimate differences on the war itself, there is surely a consensus that the forces of democracy in Iraq must be given the resources for infrastructure to succeed and that the wreckers be seen to fail. As a result of the past funding on infrastructure and governance and after the successful elections, is there not now a reasonable chance that at last the people of Iraq will have a government who they can recognise as their own and with whom, it is hoped, they can co-operate against the wreckers?

Baroness Amos: My Lords, my noble friend is right: the people of Iraq have demonstrated time and again that they want a democratic government. They had the opportunity for that through their elections, but the security situation remains a cause for concern. It is also important that we remember that Iraq is not a poor country. At the moment, they spend a lot of their revenue subsidising fuel and food so that both are practically free of charge, and they will need to consider that so they can put some of those resources into services and investment.

Baroness Tonge: My Lords, at the time of sanctions against Iraq, there was huge concern about the nutritional state of children in that country. Has that improved, and, if so, who is monitoring it?

Baroness Amos: My Lords, my understanding—this is from a previous briefing that I have had, so I do not know the up-to-date situation—is that the position on nutrition has improved. That is being monitored through the United Nations. If I have in any way misled the noble Baroness, I will of course write to her, and if I have further information on that, I will include that in the letter.

Baroness Gardner of Parkes: My Lords, did the Minister see the reports in the press yesterday that some American funds are, almost literally, being thrown around in Iraq with no accountability? Is she satisfied that there is proper accountability for any assistance that we are giving?

Baroness Amos: My Lords, I have seen those reports, which I think were on a BBC website and which are further reported in the press this morning. I have not seen the report to which those reports refer, so this is something that the United States Government will have to look at. The United Kingdom Government are aware that this is a difficult situation in which to monitor disbursement of funds. That means that we are extra careful about the monitoring mechanisms that we put in place.

Baroness Whitaker: My Lords, does my noble friend agree that social reconstruction is an important part of the reconstruction of Iraq, and can she say what the Government are doing to enhance civil society and the training of the ordinary justice function?

Baroness Amos: My Lords, enhancement of the social sector is important. We are doing a considerable amount of work in the justice sector. We have trained 216 Iraqi judges, lawyers and prosecutors in human rights, international humanitarian law and independence of the judiciary. In addition to that, we have a £5 million civil society fund, which is funding nine partnerships between nascent Iraqi and international NGOs, many of which are focused on engaging with government and helping government to become more responsive.

Civil Service Bill

Lord Sheldon: asked Her Majesty's Government:
	When they will make a statement on the draft Civil Service Bill.

Lord Bassam of Brighton: My Lords, the Government are considering responses received to their proposals for legislation for the Civil Service. We will make a statement in due course.

Lord Sheldon: My Lords, we have heard this a number of times. It is hard for me to thank the Minister for that reply, although I accept that the ultimate responsibility is not his. Is he aware that it is 15 months since the consultation exercise began and a Civil Service Bill, which was promoted, was going to be started? Is he aware that the Civil Service itself, including the Cabinet Secretary, want that Bill, to protect the integrity of the Civil Service? Surely the Government should not stand in the way.

Lord Bassam of Brighton: My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord for his comments. I think that he understands that we are a Government with a busy and active legislative programme. Our priorities are the safety and security of our country; improving our welfare system; and making improvements to education and so on. So that has to take its place in the queue. I am sure that the noble Lord will be pleased to hear, however, that, as part of our work generally on improving the quality of governance, the Cabinet Secretary and the first Civil Service Commissioner will tomorrow launch consultation on a new Civil Service code, which was touched on in the consultation on the draft Bill. Copies of the draft code will of course be placed in the Library of the House.

Lord Maclennan of Rogart: My Lords, as the Prime Minister has made much of the importance of delivery in this latter Parliament in which he is serving and has set up a delivery unit in the Cabinet, will the Minister explain how a measure that was considered to be of such importance that it formed an important part of the cross-party agreement with the Liberal Democrats even prior to the 1997 general election is still given such low priority?

Lord Bassam of Brighton: My Lords, things have moved on since 1997. One might say that the Liberal Democrats have moved on since 1997, but I am not so sure. Of course, these are important matters. Our Government have made progress on a number of fronts, tackling issues raised in the consultation on the draft Bill. We now publish an annual report to Parliament on special adviser numbers—a particular concern—and on their cost and responsibilities, which are further concerns. We updated the codes of conduct for Ministers and special advisers last summer. We now have induction programmes for new Ministers and special advisers to clarify roles, boundaries and responsibilities. So many of the things that are on that governance agenda, on which the noble Lord obviously places great weight, we have already begun to tackle on a day-to-day basis. That seems to be a practical way of dealing with the problems that arise from time to time with the Civil Service.

Lord Forsyth of Drumlean: My Lords, is not the truth of the matter that the Government are seeking to delay the Bill because they have sought to politicise the Civil Service? They have politicised the Government information service, flooded Whitehall with special advisers who seem to do what they like and consistently ignored the checks and balances on the conduct of Ministers. Is it not disgraceful that at this stage we have a Minister coming to the Dispatch Box saying yet again, "Wait and see", as regards the Bill, which all parties and, indeed, the Civil Service want?

Lord Bassam of Brighton: My Lords, I will not take the allegation that somehow our Government are peculiar among all governments in their relationship with civil servants. The noble Lord was a member of a government in which the Prime Minister was famous for deliberating as to whether they were "one of us". I do not think that that is one of the qualifications that we apply when looking at the civil servants in this country, who do a brilliant job and whose integrity and independence this Government in particular rely on and trust. As for delays, I have heard it said from the Conservative Benches in the past that they now believe in a Civil Service Act. In that case, why did they not make that a manifesto commitment during the general election last year?

Lord Foulkes of Cumnock: My Lords, is the Minister aware that one of the most rabid, right-wing correspondents in the Scottish Sunday newspaper Scotland on Sunday is a Mr Gerald Warner, who used to be special adviser to the Secretary of State for Scotland, a chap called Michael Forsyth?

Lord Bassam of Brighton: My Lords, I have only one confession on this; that is not a newspaper that I read over the weekends.

Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville: My Lords, does the Minister think that the British Government would have achieved as much over the past 150 years if the 19th-century administration that brought in the Trevelyan-Northcote reforms had been as casual as this one is being?

Lord Bassam of Brighton: My Lords, I would like to think that I have demonstrated that we have not been casual in our approach to the way in which the Civil Service is run, managed, modernised and reformed. Actually, I think that this Government have done a great deal to enhance the reputation of the Civil Service and to ensure that we have high standards of professionalism and a very skilled workforce so that we can deliver on the policies that we set out in our manifestos and commitments.

Baroness Wilcox: My Lords, I want to be a little more generous to the Minister than my noble friend was. I understand that he must be very embarrassed at having to stand up time and again and prevaricate over the issue. I went back and looked at what the Government said that they were doing. The Government have not committed themselves to introducing legislation to set in stone the impartiality of the Civil Service but rather are consulting on whether to do so. I understand that the consultations have taken place and that all the papers are in. The noble Lord, Lord Sheldon, and I have been asking this Question for many months, so I would like to know: why cannot the Minister make a decision?

Lord Bassam of Brighton: My Lords, I do not think that it is right to accuse me, or the Government for that matter, of prevaricating on the issue. We have been very clear in our approach. Yes, we have consulted and, yes, we are taking our time, but we have never had a Civil Service Act in this country. We have worked extremely well with a series of reforms going back, as the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, said, to Northcote and Trevelyan. We have taken a number of significant measures to clarify roles and responsibilities, which we have set out in codes of conduct for Ministers and special advisers. We do that on continuing basis; this is a matter to which we give constant attention.

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, does my noble friend agree with me that the arguments coming from—

Lord Grocott: My Lords, I point out to my noble friend that we are in the 24th minute.

Drug Legalisation

Lord Cobbold: asked Her Majesty's Government:
	Whether, as part of the proposed review of the drug classification system, they will undertake a broad review of the advantages and disadvantages of drug legalisation.

Lord Bassam of Brighton: My Lords, no. The objective of the forthcoming review of the classification of drugs announced by my right honourable friend the Home Secretary on 19 January is to bring greater clarity to the system of control. Her Majesty's Government have no intention of legalising controlled drugs.

Lord Cobbold: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that response, which I am afraid is very much what I expected. All are agreed that drugs are harmful, that their use should be discouraged and that education and rehabilitation programmes should be encouraged. The disagreements arise on the supply side. The war on drugs is simply not being won. Is the Minister aware that the drug trade is said to be the second largest global business after oil and that it is totally in the hands of organised crime? Does he agree that legalisation would permit regulation, taxation and quality control? Does he also agree that it is illogical to treat alcohol and tobacco differently from other recreational drugs? I believe that this is a global problem, but it is high time that we had a broad and deep discussion, debate and review of this area.

Lord Bassam of Brighton: My Lords, with his knowledge and insight into this area of policy, the noble Lord asks a wide range of questions. It is certainly not the Government's policy to endorse the option of legalising drugs, and we have made that clear on many occasions. The classification review will enable us to take account of where we are going with drugs policy in one particular area, and that is right.
	I agree with the noble Lord that this is a global problem and it obviously demands global solutions. While that sounds glib, in essence it is the right approach, and we need to work internationally to tackle many of the problems to which the noble Lord referred. The noble Lord is also absolutely right that we need to tackle the matter through education campaigns. That is exactly what we have been doing, and the FRANK education campaign, which has been going on for some time, has been very successful. Anything further than that would be a matter for broader discussion.

Lord Walton of Detchant: My Lords, does the Minister agree that the government decision to reclassify cannabis was partly a consequence of a very comprehensive inquiry conducted by your Lordships' Select Committee on Science and Technology, which examined, among other matters, the potential medical uses of that substance? Does he further agree that there is now available for inhalation rather than for smoking a standardised product of cannabis, which has been shown by controlled trials to be of some benefit to patients with multiple sclerosis and to those with a number of other conditions?

Lord Bassam of Brighton: My Lords, I pay tribute to the committee that has considered these matters. The noble Lord is right: claims are made for the beneficial health effects of some variants of cannabis. The noble Lord is also right that very detailed and careful consideration was given to the classification of cannabis. Notwithstanding that, the Home Secretary's decision to have a broader review of classification makes sense, given that the current classification system has now been in place for some 35 years.

Lord Addington: My Lords, does the Minister agree that one of the major problems related to addiction to illegal narcotics is the amount of crime that goes with it? Will the Minister give us an idea of the Government's thinking on allowing GPs to prescribe some of these drugs in a safe form that would break at least some of this cycle of crime and, it is hoped, be less damaging to those who are consuming the drugs?

Lord Bassam of Brighton: My Lords, the noble Lord is right that the abuse of drugs is very much related to acquisitive crimes. In the year to April 2005, the level of acquisitive crime to which drug-related crime is attached fell, so we can see progress in attacking some of the issues related to this matter. As to the noble Lord's point about the prescription of some drugs and class A drugs in particular, there have been long-standing debates in the health world about the sense of that, and I know that such an intervention has been practised in the past. Clearly, we need to take account of it through drug intervention programmes and so on.

Lord Judd: My Lords—

Baroness Masham of Ilton: My Lords, the very successful anti-smoking campaign has had an impact. Will the Minister extend that to the cannabis-smoking population?

Lord Bassam of Brighton: My Lords, the FRANK campaign does exactly that. It is extremely successful. There have been 8 million hits on its website, and I am told that it is one of the most successful education campaigns on drugs ever run. It now seems to be having some effect. I have some figures, which I shall not go through, but I am happy to put them in correspondence to the noble Baroness.

Lord Morris of Aberavon: My Lords, has there been an increase or decrease in the use of cannabis since its reclassification?

Lord Bassam of Brighton: My Lords, I understand that there has been a decrease in the use of cannabis among young people. That is an extremely successful result. The proportion of young people aged from 16 to 24 reported as taking drugs has fallen by 15 per cent in the year to 2005.

Lord Avebury: My Lords, does the review cover the use of khat, which is widely used in the Somali community and which has been shown by recent government research to have harmful side-effects?

Lord Bassam of Brighton: My Lords, I do not think that the review will take account of khat. I have background material on that. There has been a recent review of khat, and I know that there are concerns about its use. I know, too, that it is part of a wider health programme to make the Somali community, in particular, much more aware of its damaging effects.

Business

Lord Grocott: My Lords, I remind the House that a Statement will be repeated with the leave of the House later today. We shall take the Statement immediately after the first debate in the name of my noble friend Lord Harrison. The Statement is on Afghanistan and will be read by my noble friend Lord Drayson.

Business of the House: Debates Today

Baroness Amos: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
	Moved, That the debate on the Motion in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, set down for today shall be limited to two and a half hours and that in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Jay of Paddington, to three hours.—(Baroness Amos.)
	On Question, Motion agreed to

Health and Safety at Work

Lord Harrison: rose to call attention to health and safety at work, especially with regard to preventing deaths and accidents in the workplace; and to move for Papers.
	My Lords, years ago, while working in an office at the Oxford University Press, my mother fell backwards over a bottom drawer of a filing cabinet that a colleague had carelessly left open. Her consequent injuries blighted her later years. Yesterday, a worker in an insurance office in Fife was awarded compensation after tripping and falling over a pile of—ironically—accident claim forms left lying on the floor of the office, again by a fellow worker.
	Such accidents impoverish the lives of the injured victim, demoralise members of staff and cost firms money in compensation claims, to say nothing of the concerns of the victim's family. A most poignant tragedy recently reported involved a worker crushed to death by a falling steel grid in Newark. A fellow worker—his son—was first on the scene of his dying dad. That accident cost the firm a £20,000 fine. The subsequent inquiry found that it
	"would have been simple and cheap to prevent".
	Too often, health and safety in the workplace is overlooked or, occasionally, subject to wilful neglect. It is a burden on business. The British Cleaning Council recently suggested that inadequate levels of floor cleaning, or the failure to adequately warn fellow workers of slippery floors costs British business £500 million a year in slips, trips and broken bones—a sum that floors me—and that is before we count the human cost.
	Today's debate explores how we might reduce the steady figure of some 200-plus deaths and the 150,000 non-fatal injuries in Britain's workplaces. I look forward to the contributions from colleagues who are much more expert in these areas than I am, and to the reply from the Minister, who is a champion in tackling this stubborn problem. The Government and HSE have been laudably active in publishing the joint strategy on improving the health and welfare of the nation, which follows HSE's own 2004 Strategy for the Workplace Health and Safety in Great Britain to 2010 and Beyond. The proposals build on the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, which has seen in the intervening years a fall in fatal and non-fatal injuries from 651 to 159 and 335,000 to 111,000. While some 25 per cent of these falls are attributable to the substitution of service industries for the more dangerous heavy industries of the past, the Act has never the less clearly worked, and benefited from continuing political consensus.
	We must do more, however. Perhaps we can begin by looking at where, geographically, the highest incidences of these tragedies take place—notably Scotland and Birmingham. I ask the Minister why that is. What can be learnt from such geographical accident hotspots? Similarly, an analysis of accidents by industry lists the agricultural sector—and hunting—as top, despite the fact that there have been falling numbers of workers in that industry.
	Agriculture is followed by construction, transportation, manufacturing and the extractive industries. What new strategies do HMG have to pursue these high-risk offenders? What further resources are needed to ensure, for instance, high levels of staff training in safety, close monitoring of the problem industries and the vigorous promotion of good benchmarking?
	One such innovative example of good practice is the firm Wilson James, which provides security and logistical support services to the construction industry. Its introduction of an on-site medical centre with a full-time nurse, providing first aid and call out services, has saved—within just 10 months—£145,000. It has also had the ancillary effect of improving the workforce's morale and trust in the firm, and raising levels of general health among the workforce. How can we best redistribute the wealth of good ideas and best practice of which this is an example? Prioritising the assessment of risk in the workplace, as opposed to unthinkingly applying blanket legislation untailored to the particular deeds of a workplace, is to be welcomed. It is the theme of HMG and HSE's preferred approach.
	However, I do not want this more targeted approach to affect the need for regular monitoring and inspection of premises. I am somewhat alarmed by the proposals of Philip Hampton which encourage a less rigorous inspection regime, supposedly to reduce red tape burdening business. Red tape should only ever exist for a good purpose, but reducing inspection of so-called "less risky" premises to once in 20 years, as may be the case, or abandoning unannounced inspection visits, as Hampton suggests, aids the bad employer; it also inflames the vast majority of good employers, whose competitiveness is thereby undermined by bad apples cutting health and safety corners.
	Can the Minister say how such targeting of risk will take place? Does he recognise the tragedy of only identifying a risk-rich workplace after a tragedy has occurred? A good inspection regime can forestall these kinds of tragedies. In advancing a targeted risk assessment approach, a well recognised inspection regime will act as a guarantor of high health and safety standards.
	Is the Health and Safety Executive properly financed? A 1 per cent increase in its budget last year is surely insufficient for new duties. Take HSE's excellent new telephone helpline for small firms, perhaps a sector most in need of relevant health and safety advice. That helpline needs secure, extra funding to ensure that SMEs stay safe—not sorry.
	Another piece of counsel found within HSE's excellent series of helpful pamphlets is the need for employers to pick the brains of their own workers on how practically to improve health and safety. That is all well and good—all members of the workforce can and should contribute—but I worry that too many safety representatives are seemingly sacked for asking awkward questions and for raising concerns that bad employers do not want to hear. Will Her Majesty's Government support the principle of roving reps, the right of unions to initiate safety prosecutions against dangerous employers and the right of safety reps to issue provisional improvement and prohibition notices when poor work conditions are exposed?
	My noble friend also addressed the frequency of investigation of major injuries. Are all such injuries investigated and, if not, why not? In the HSC 10-year strategy report, it is implied that only one in five such injuries is thoroughly investigated. Surely, knowing why fatalities have happened is the key to their future prevention. The prosecution of offenders and exacting appropriate fines are also necessary complements to a stronger, business-friendly advisory approach to workplace safety. Is my noble friend happy with the current low levels of prosecution and perfunctory fines? As the Court of Appeal opined in 1998 in the landmark judgment in Regina v Howe and Son (Engineers) Limited, a fine needs to be large enough to bring the message home of securing a safe working environment not only to the management, but also to the company's shareholders.
	I welcome the Corporate Manslaughter Bill which is now being studied in the Commons, but it will need to be strengthened in its scope, in the definition of who is a senior manager, in what constitutes an offence, in defining directors' duties, in identifying who has the right to institute proceedings and in respect of Crown immunity, the last of which I believe is relevant to your Lordships' own place of work, this Chamber. Walking backwards and tripping up on the steps of the Throne delivering the Speech to the Queen is clearly a workplace accident.
	I have necessarily concentrated on workplace accidents and I do not have time to dwell on the unwelcome rise of attacks by members of the public on employees, other than to remark that combining the role of bus conductor and driver may save money but at the expense, I believe, of employee safety. That matter requires further thought.
	I want to refer to occupational health. Some 2 million people in the United Kingdom have ill health attributable to the nature of their current or past employment and some half a million presented as new cases in the past 12 months. I strongly support this week's Green Paper on welfare reform, which emphasises the need for employers to respond to their employees' occupational health concerns. Good health of itself is desirable but copying good practice in this area also has economic benefits as exemplified by the Port of London Authority's enlightened sickness absence management policy, resulting in a 70 per cent reduction in absences among the workforce in 2003. Is my noble friend confident that the statistics currently available reflect the real levels of occupational work-related deaths? Hazards magazine's report A job to die for? claims that thousands of deaths related to occupational cancer, lung and heart disease go uncounted. The report states that they have reached epidemic proportions. That may exaggerate the case, but we need to have the facts.
	That brings me to the need to predict and anticipate changing health concerns and to spot old concerns in new forms. I was recently informed of a district nurse refusing to visit clients in their homes if they smoked. I sympathise with the nurse, but it is a tricky problem for the management to resolve. What strategies do Her Majesty's Government have to adapt to changing need in a field where current workplace conditions can lead to premature death later in life?
	Finally, I turn to the European Union and the fast-developing single marketplace which is increasing the need for common, high standards of protection in the workplace as workers take the opportunity to take their skills across borders. I congratulate Her Majesty's Government on being second only to Sweden in maintaining high standards in health and safety in the European Union. How will they bring in additional safeguards to ensure the safety of workers in the developing single market? I applaud initiatives during the British presidency to encourage the spread of best practice in this field. An example is a conference that took place in Liverpool that focused on the vexed question of hearing loss associated with noisy workplaces, a campaign that is now supported by The Who's guitarist, Pete Townshend, whose hearing has so sadly suffered from years of excessive decibels.
	More generally, will the Government repel the sometimes shallow criticism of European Union and United Kingdom health and safety measures that seek to bring sense to the workplace to the benefit of workers and their firms? Does my noble friend agree that the trivialisation of these measures in the media, and by some politicians—such as supposedly obliging orchestras to play Beethoven's symphonies pianissimo— must be vigorously rebuffed? Health and safety is of interest to all and should be pushed and promoted, as it is by this Government, with sense and sensibility.
	My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.

Baroness Neuberger: My Lords, this topic is of huge importance and I am enormously grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, for initiating this debate. I am also enormously grateful to the Minister for speaking on this matter on a variety of occasions and I propose to quote him a couple of times. Health and safety at work is a very serious issue. I got involved with it through chairing a National Health Service trust and later being chief executive of the King's Fund. As the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, said, there are other areas where health and safety is hugely important—for example, agriculture, business and heavy industry—but I shall restrict my comments to the area of health and social care.
	Like the Minister, that is where my experience lies. The Minister has frequently spoken about the risk to nurses and their problems with their backs, but they are also at risk from needlestick injuries that occur when people stab themselves with a needle that they were supposed to be sticking into a patient. That can cause considerable damage and at the height of nervousness about the transmission of variant CJD and AIDS, it became a huge issue. There is also the issue of violence against members of staff, which the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, raised. That is a huge risk, particularly for people working in the health side of health and social care.
	The question of backs is a hugely vexed issue. Nurses have, rightly, strict instructions not to lift older people who have fallen unless a suitable hoist can be found. That, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said in a speech on 13 July 2005, is,
	"a particularly thorny issue. The major cause of work-related ill health for nurses is musculoskeletal disorder, particularly back pain. 5.8 per cent of nurses reported musculoskeletal disorders caused by, or made worse by, work",
	That, as the noble Lord said, is more than twice the national average. He continued, saying that it was:
	"Hardly a surprising statistic given the kind of lifting the job can entail, but it causes great pain and costs our health services dearly".
	Clearly, as the noble Lord also said,
	"nurses are owed protection from back injury",
	but,
	"at the same time patients are owed the right to be treated promptly and with dignity".
	All the evidence shows that routine use of lifting aids reduces back injury and greatly increases attendance at work. Yet, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, also said,
	"it is worrying if nurses feel that even in an emergency they must never resort to manual handling. The Health and Safety Executive recognises that there are exceptional times when manual handling will be necessary, but that message is clearly not getting through".
	The Minister continued by quoting the Disability Rights Commission, which has said that,
	"fear of litigation leads to a completely illogical conclusion which denies disabled people independence".
	The commission also said:
	"Legislation effectively shifts the burden of managing risk onto public authorities, who, rather than supporting people to manage risk, instead feel compelled to attempt to eliminate all potential risks. In doing so they deny disabled people the chance to lead an independent life—in which a reasonable level of risk is a normal part".
	That is the problem; we keep setting one benefit against another risk.
	Let me also quote a headline from the Guardian of two years ago. Your Lordships can see from its yellowing state that it is my favourite newspaper quotation of all time.
	"Q. How many care workers does it take to change a light bulb? A. Ask a risk assessor".
	This was the true story of a Department of Health advertisement, trying to encourage people to join care services, which showed one care worker holding up an arm to change a light bulb in an older person's ceiling. It was successful, and said that if you felt you could do the small things that make a big difference, you too could earn a living in social care—except that every local authority in the country wrote in to say that no one was allowed to change a light bulb alone. You need one person to change the bulb; secondly, and rightly, another person to hold the ladder. A third person is needed due to electricity regulations to turn off electricity at the mains—since most older people, and many younger people, fail to check their wiring or have it renewed sufficiently often. Some local authorities also wrote to say that a fourth person is often needed to comfort the older person who, by then, has Piccadilly Circus happening in their flat.

Lord Oakeshott of Seagrove Bay: My Lords, that could be a counsellor.

Baroness Neuberger: My Lords, it need not be a counsellor, it can be anybody. In truth, the matter is incredibly difficult since, in our own homes, we change light bulbs on our own. Yet people who are employed by public authorities must be protected from injury.
	There are all kinds of further risks; we have got ourselves into a mess in this area. For instance, while working on a book partly concerned with the subject, I interviewed a great many nurses anonymously, for they did not want to be reported on it. They said that they were increasingly nervous about touching patients—holding a hand, or rubbing a back—because of the consequences of it going wrong and them being accused of assault. Similarly, there are cases of teachers worried about putting sun lotion on small children because of our incredible obsession with paedophilia. Some of that is well placed and some of it plainly not. So, they are nervous of someone accusing them of doing the wrong thing. I do not know whether your Lordships have ever seen two five-year olds trying to put sun lotion on each other, but I would rather take that risk.
	I raise these examples to make a few substantive points. Some regulations are enormously sensible; for example, those on backs are hugely important. We have seen too many terrible injuries to feel anything else, as the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, made clear. My own NHS experience makes that abundantly clear. None of us should quarrel with them, but we should quarrel with how they are interpreted. What is wrong—as the risk doctors who have written eloquently about this, David Hillson and Ruth Murray-Webster, argued strongly yesterday when briefing me for today—is the fear of the consequences of taking a risk: not the back injury, which might be a genuine risk, but the managers who are furious because the rules have not been followed. So the regulations become stronger to stop people breaking the rules than either the Health and Safety Executive or NHS management originally intended.
	People become increasingly scared of going against procedures. Nurses become increasingly frightened of touching patients, so they put their natural desire to give comfort into cold storage. For the best of reasons, they are more likely to put in a central line than to hold a hand or rub a back, but they are hiding behind the regulations. Members of staff become increasingly scared of taking a chance. They either give up entirely or they become too process-driven, blaming the Health Service Executive incorrectly for what they are not doing, incidentally making the system increasingly unkind.
	Noble Lords will talk about other areas today, but my concern lies with this increasingly process-driven way of approaching health and social care. The can-do attitude that lies within superb health and social care workers is being suffocated by the perceived weight of the regulations. Managers get impatient and staff take fewer risks. For example, compulsory admissions under mental health legislation have increased 6 per cent over nine years, but there is no increase in the homicide or suicide rates of that group.
	So what should we do? It is not about the Health Service Executive changing its values or saying that accidents at work do not matter. They plainly do. It is about three discrete things. The first, an important point, is that the Health Service Executive needs to be clear about why a particular regulation—for example, on backs—is there and the risks involved. It needs to be ready to back off if necessary. Secondly, to achieve that and to be taken seriously, we need much greater education of young people about these issues—perhaps what one could broadly call citizenship education. We need to get children and young people to understand that life is full of risks—we cannot remove them all—but that they have to take a proper view of what is likely or reasonable, and what is a risk to them or others. We have to make choices and we have conflicting objectives. We need to obey the procedures and to get the job done.
	Finally, there is the much more difficult area of risk to personal standing, esteem and career—we have seen a fair bit of that in politics in the past few weeks. Teachers are increasingly terrified of touching pupils because of our watchfulness. One teacher who I know very well was watching football practice when a child got badly hurt. He was 11 or 12 years old and was crying for his mother. After consideration for quite a few minutes, the male teacher eventually decided to put an arm around the child to comfort him. The risk of being judged a paedophile was not great. But should he have been accused, he, his family and school would have been treated mercilessly. So, too, are those thought to assault patients or who are afraid that they might be thought to do so.
	The risks may be small, but the consequences are huge. Last year, the Prime Minister, in a superb speech to the Institute for Public Policy Research and the Association of British Insurers, pointed out that no public servant ever gets brownie points for not regulating or not taking action. He was absolutely right. Officials and government have to be seen to do something. But sometimes that something might be to say that life is not risk-free; that we have to protect ourselves and the vulnerable; but that sometimes we have to say that things have to go on as they are and we have to take risks ourselves. I hope that the Health and Safety Executive and the Minister will lead a public debate on these issues, for we surely need one.

Baroness Gibson of Market Rasen: My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Harrison for initiating this very important debate. I declare an interest as the president of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, which has briefed me today. As a former health and safety commissioner, I know well the importance of this debate. Long-term plans for health and safety are vital if any strategies are to be successful. That applies especially in the workplace where older dangers are being eradicated, but new dangers are arising. Over recent decades, the workplace and the world of work around it have changed significantly. The pace of change seems to be increasing.
	Nearly half of our workforce is employed in large organisations. Part-time work has increased dramatically and women now constitute 50 per cent of the workforce. Manufacturing continues to fall and numbers in the service sector continue to rise. All these changes have an impact on health and safety at work, bringing new challenges for the regulators, employers and employees. The Health and Safety Commission believes that there is clear evidence that engaging the workforce benefits health and safety. That is a positive priority for it. The HSC continues to promote the business case for sensible health and safety and stresses that both the workforce and senior management have a responsibility for ensuring that health and safety becomes a main strategy at work. Health and safety representatives in companies play a key part in the achievement.
	The HSE works closely with RoSPA, which was established as a charity more than 80 years ago with a clear purpose to enhance the quality of life by exercising a powerful influence for accident prevention. It is concerned with safety in the home, at work, in water and leisure activities, in safety education and on the roads. I want to concentrate on the latter point today.
	Over the past eight years RoSPA has been developing a key issues approach to its work, focusing policy development on major topics, aiming to help to secure significant and lasting safety changes. I want to raise the need for the integration of the management of occupational road risk into mainstream occupational health and safety. Working with more than 100 other organisations, RoSPA is a major player in the Occupational Road Safety Alliance, campaigning to ensure that occupational road risk is addressed both by employers and regulators.
	Between 800 and 1,000 people are killed annually in accidents involving vehicles being driven for work purposes. Risk levels are high, as are the costs to employers, victims and society generally. RoSPA has developed guidance for organisations showing how accident rates and risks can be reduced substantially if employers tackle the issue using the framework they have in place for managing health and safety at work.
	As a member of the Government's Work-related Road Safety Task Group, RoSPA helped to promote a national debate on the issue, leading to the publication of the HSE and Department for Transport guidance, Driving at Work. This guidance covers: communicating clear messages to staff about their approach to road safety; carrying out what is described as "suitable and sufficient" risk assessments; ensuring that employers are doing as much as is "reasonably practicable" to avoid risk on the road and to ensure safe driving; providing driver training, where necessary; and monitoring and reviewing performance. Safe journey planning, properly maintained vehicles and avoidance of driving while tired are all covered by the guidance in the booklet, as are potential health impairments including alcohol and drugs. RoSPA has strongly welcomed the booklet. However, it has also placed on record its great concern that the guidance does not contain any reference to work-related road safety. This is where RoSPA and the HSE part company.
	The HSE believes that road safety at work should be regulated by the police and that more evidence is needed to justify HSE being more involved. RoSPA believes this to be misguided. RoSPA recognises that the HSE needs to work in partnership with other key agencies, obviously, but also that this is not incompatible with accepting that managing occupational road risk is mainstream health and safety. After all, work-related road accidents are the biggest cause of work-related accidental death, with up to 20 people, on average, likely to die in work-related road crashes every week. Millions of workers have to drive as part of their job. In doing so, they cover much greater mileage than they would do if driving in a purely private capacity. Employers can, of course, both exacerbate and ameliorate levels of risk faced by their employees while at work on the road. For example, they can increase the dangers by requiring employees to drive too far, too fast, in adverse weather conditions, in unsafe or inappropriate vehicles and to use mobile phones while driving. Conversely, having clear policies on speed, safe journey planning and "no mobiles while mobile" can reduce the risks.
	In an increasingly service-based economy, work-related road safety is clearly part of the changing world of work. There are definite links between driving and musculoskeletal disorders and stress, the two biggest causes of absence related to ill health caused, or made worse, by work. Both causes are clearly HSE priorities.
	Work-related road safety is an excellent health and safety culture builder and can help develop positive attitudes to sensible safety, which the HSE advocates. There is clear and growing political—and wider—public support for the idea of making work-related road safety part of health and safety at work. It has been a feature of the recent report into the work of the HSC, conducted by the House of Commons Select Committee on Work and Pensions. While road traffic law obviously places duties on all road users, where people are on the road while at work, health and safety law also applies. In this context, key duties placed on employers by the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations have particular relevance, especially risk assessment, risk avoidance, training and monitoring.
	The police, by and large, address the behaviour of individual road users; it is not part of their normal remit or training to adopt a proactive approach with employers. The HSE is needed to respond to complaints by employees about work-related road issues and to review risk management arrangements for workplaces.
	Promoting a risk management approach by employers to work-related road safety would also help to support HSE's priority theme work on site transport safety. This could be included in the inspectors' visits, so helping employers take an overview of their road transport operations as a whole.
	These are just some of the reasons behind RoSPA's position. Obviously, this agenda would pose clear challenges for the HSE, and RoSPA has sympathy with its view that additional resources may be needed to tackle this area of work. However, with the passage of time, surely it must be recognised that work-related road safety should be made a priority for the future work on health and safety.
	I believe that immediate steps should be taken to work towards a new set of work-related road safety management standards and a relevant body should be established to review progress to date, exchange information and advise on what can be done to promote and monitor further action in this area. Such a round-table approach would focus attention and encourage the considerable enthusiasm for the work-related road safety agenda, which continues to develop in the road and occupational safety communities. I look forward to my noble friend's response to the points I have raised.

Lord Brookman: My Lords, this debate is to be welcomed; we are indebted to my noble friend Lord Harrison for securing it, for no issue is greater than health and safety in the workplace.
	It is truly hard to describe the conditions in the steel industry when I started in 1953. "Dreadful" is a word that comes to mind; it was dirty and extremely dangerous. Mind you, 13,000 people were employed at the Ebbw Vale works then; it is now, sadly, like many others, closed. But that is another story.
	Throughout my adult life, I have been impressed with the efforts of trade unions—yes, trade unions—and employers in their everyday efforts to improve health and safety in the steel industry. When I was a local trade union official, health and safety was extremely high on the agenda, and vigilance was key, as much with one's own members as with management. There was no cutting corners; no quick fix; we avoided extra payments for undertaking unsafe practices and so on. We tried to save the members from themselves in many ways.
	On becoming general-secretary of the main steel workers union, the ISTC—now renamed Community following merger—I was heavily involved with health and safety matters. I sat on the safety body for British Steel—now renamed Corus following the merger with Hoogovens, the Dutch company—and for a period I chaired the Joint Accident Prevention Advisory Committee, JAPAC, which was established in the 1960s following trade unions and others pushing hard for legislation. All this effort eventually resulted in the 1974 Act of Parliament referred to by my noble friend Lord Harrison, which, in itself, was worth its weight in gold. It legislated for the safety of people at work, as well as ensuring that machinery and equipment were maintained and of a high standard. As a consequence, we should all be proud that the United Kingdom is one of the few countries with legislation devoted to health and safety. In short, a big thank you to Michael Foot.
	Since the birth of Corus, a very funny name which is the same as that of a string of hotels—I cannot understand it, quite frankly; I do not know what was wrong with British Steel—the company has continually improved its health and safety performance. As, indeed, has the EEF, the manufacturer's organisation, which has contributed very successfully—for example, in the wire industry—by reducing accidents through joint co-operation between management, the unions and HSE.
	At Corus, its lost-time injury frequency performance, LTIF, record is, I am pleased to say, one of the best in the global steel industry, reducing from 7.5 LTIF in 2003, to 3.8 in 2004 and 2.9 in 2005. That is good news. Fatalities? There should be none—but there are. Tragically, at Corus there were five in 2000, which had reduced to two in 2002; there were two in 2003, none in 2004 and, tragically again, two in 2005. The company and its trade unions conduct transparent, thorough investigations when these tragedies occur to both determine the cause and to share learning to prevent a repeat.
	Quite correctly, the company has a key objective to operate within a safe, sustainable environment. It believes that this approach will maximise its efforts to be heavily involved—and I hope the Government ensure that it is involved—in providing its products for the 2012 Olympics. Would it not be great if British steel and manufacturing played a major role in those, hopefully, highly successful Olympic Games? One of the pre-requisites for products to be considered for use in the Olympic Games must be that the companies have a robust health and safety record. Our companies in the steel industry have that and I wish them every success.
	The steel industry is not easy to work in. There have been—and still are—many difficulties and tensions between management and unions, and noble Lords will know the reasons for that. However, in relation to health and safety, there is common cause—and that is how it should be—but it is important that pressure is maintained. My union has more than 1,000 volunteers acting as safety representatives—and that is good—who are making a significant contribution. As with other industries, the growth in outsourcing and the ever increasing number of contractors coming into industries like the steel industry are difficult issues with which to deal. Therefore strong enforcement of health and safety standards is vital. It is extremely important that the Government introduce stiffer penalties for those unscrupulous employers who pay scant regard to health and safety for their employees.
	I applaud employers such as Corus that have clear health and safety policies and ensure that their executives visit the plants. This year, 155 visits have been made by the executive board to plants throughout the country, ensuring that all employees of Corus are well trained and competent to perform their tasks. Recognising excellence by rewarding health and safety ideas and initiatives from its workforce is all good stuff. At the end of the day, workers who leave their homes to go to work deserve nothing less than first-class protection to ensure their safety at their place of work and that they can return home to their families.

Baroness Whitaker: My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend on securing a debate on this important but often neglected subject. I shall take a slightly longer view of health and safety at work in the UK. That is partly because I had the privilege of being in at the beginning of the Health and Safety Executive and Commission in 1975 but also because it is easy to forget now what a deep and successful change of culture there has been.
	As forerunners to the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, which set the framework for this change of culture, I pick out two key strands. The first is that, like most effective revolutions, the Act built on and transformed previous trends, from the first factory inspectors in 1833, one of Lord Shaftesbury's many reforms to address the downside of the industrial revolution, to the piecemeal legislation of the post-war period. Reform had other powerful advocates. Charles Dickens caricatured the employers' association of the day as the "Society for Mangling Operatives".
	But the second strand was an adverse one. Before 1975, responsibility for health and safety in some of the most dangerous industries was held by the sponsoring department for each occupational sector, thus mining safety and nuclear safety were with the Department of Energy, and agricultural health and safety with MAFF, as it then was. Six government departments had responsibilities for heath and safety at work. To lodge the initiative for prosecution and the pressure to invest perhaps quite a lot of money to save lives with the sponsoring department is to set something of a disincentive for vigorous and independent action. When I was given responsibility for gas safety, newly acquired from the Department of Energy, prosecutions in the gas supply industry under any workplace health and safety legislation were a complete rarity.
	When it was proposed that all these responsibilities should be integrated in one agency, there was all-party support in Parliament, apart from in respect of agricultural workers, where in your Lordships' House, the predecessors of Members opposite did not think that farm labourers should have the same health and safety protection as everyone else; and there was a fair degree of Whitehall opposition. The emergence of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 was indeed a victory.
	What was so good about it? As my noble friend Lord Brookman said, it is an empowering Act. It set up an agency, independent of departments, to further workpeople's right to reasonable protection from accidents and ill health at work through a general duty on their employer, and it extended this right for the first time to all workpeople. It gave inspectors new and flexible sanctions on their behalf. It gave workpeople a right for the first time to information about the risks they faced and it gave their representatives rights to pursue their health and safety without victimisation, forever constructively altering the balance of power in the workplace. My noble friend Lady Turner was responsible for one of the provisions to achieve that. The structure of the agency was, at the time, innovatory. It had and still has a commission, appointed from representatives of those affected by workplace risk, trades unionists, employers, representatives of the public, whose safety was also covered in the legislation, which could make decisions at arm's length from the Ministers who account for it to Parliament. Of all the so-called corporatist institutions of the 1970s, it has probably stood the test of time best and survived intact. It also had the good fortune of a tradition of inspectors of high calibre and dedication, able to use their considerable discretion with professional judgment. As my right honourable friend Michael Foot said when defending HSE against cuts by the government of 1989,
	"magnificent people who serve the community and industry".
	The Health and Safety Commission and Executive structure is a model of its kind. It is copied all over the world. It is influential in the casting of European legislation, which is greatly to the advantage of the UK. What has it achieved for our people?
	Between 1974 and 2005, death at work fell by 76 per cent, and accidents by 67 per cent. As my noble friend Lord Harrison said, in 1974 there were 651 deaths and well over 300,000 accidents. Last year there were 159 deaths and just over 100,000 accidents—a huge reduction. In Europe, as my noble friend said, only Sweden has a smaller toll of workplace accidents, and it has a less complex and more modern economy. It would be right to say that the decline and automation of heavy industry has also had an effect. But, also, new science-based industries, greatly adding to our prosperity, have been brought into being within a safety framework which ensured they could prosper without scandal, shock and banning—such as in the expansion of the chemical industry, potentially very dangerous.
	But this level of security has brought its own problems. Since death, injury and disease are no longer an inexorable part of the routine pursuit of earning a living, people feel they have a right to absolute safety, which is simply not available. The nature of risk is often poorly understood, as the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, has suggested. Towards the end of my time in HSE we wanted to estimate what would be a tolerable risk from nuclear power installations. We had some difficulty in getting HSE's distinguished scientists to explain the options in lay language so that the public could give informed consent. I should be interested in what my noble friend can tell us about HSE's approach to this dilemma now, particularly since HSE has just been asked to estimate the safety of various energy sources.
	Health and safety at work in the UK has a good system. What still remains to be done in the system? True justice means making every agent with power over life and death at work appropriately responsible, initially for preventing tragedies, but if that has failed, responsible for being called to account in a court of law. There is a gap here. There is as yet no offence of corporate manslaughter. It was a manifesto commitment. We have a draft Bill, eminently suitable for pre-legislative scrutiny, as should any Bill be which creates a significant new offence. What is the timetable for getting it on to the statute book?

Lord Christopher: My Lords, I join my colleagues in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, for this debate. Workers in Britain should probably be more grateful to him, because it is clearly a major issue. Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Lea, will be able to persuade some unions to publish an analysis of this debate in union journals. It is as well that they know that some parliamentarians are interested and concerned about the problem.
	It is all too easy to generalise about health and safety and accidents at work, because organisations vary so much. Several people have mentioned the construction industry. That was imprinted in my memory in the late 1980s, when I was asked to represent the TUC at a memorial service at a church in London for construction workers who had died in the previous 12 months. Sadly, I cannot remember the exact number, but I went along assuming that it was for the workers who had died in Britain. In fact, it was some 30 or 40 workers who had died in London. This brought home to me just how serious this industry can be. It is notoriously difficult to deal with because of the large turnover of workers, distant sites, time-limited contracts, loose materials and tools lying about, and often poor supervision—although it is fair to say that this is not exclusively an employer problem. For some reason construction workers, perhaps through familiarity, seem unwilling to do a great deal about following the rules. To all this is now added a language difficulty, because of the many European workers now in construction. This industry calls for special attention and some analysis of how we can best improve the situation. The general rules that might apply in your Lordships' House certainly would not work there.
	The other industry that has been mentioned which is extremely difficult is farming. It is not just a question of one man and his dog; really it is one man and his machine, or one woman and an agitated heifer. How you convey on a regular basis the need to be careful and give warnings about particular machinery and accidents with large animals I am not sure, but it would be useful if Defra and the NFU could from time to time convey to those in the industry what the issues are, and what has been learnt from what has happened.
	What might be of more general application for consideration are good examples of work that is being done in the right direction. Perhaps I can assist my noble friend Lady Whitaker, because I want to say something about what has been done at British Nuclear Fuels. I declare my interest, of which most people are aware. I assure the House that BNF has not asked me to speak about this—I wanted to do so myself. This is an industry that works with nuclear materials, very heavy loads, gases, acids and chemicals. Work is done at heights and in radioactive conditions. One could hardly imagine a more difficult situation to deal with.
	BNF's approach to health and safety has three strands: the conventional one—for example, trips, falls and occupational ill health; nuclear safety; and radioactive safety. It has intensive training on safety, and refresher training. If health and safety performance slips, immediate corrective action is triggered. In fact the chief executive, on appropriate occasions, will make personal inspections and examinations of what may have happened. There are safety stand-down days, if it is clear that in any area all is not as it should be, for whatever reason. Staff have refresher behavioural programmes.
	I do not want to give a lot of figures, but the results have been remarkable over the past few years. The number of hours lost through accident or health and safety considerations in 2000–01 was 0.6 per 200,000 hours worked. By the middle of last year this figure had been reduced to 0.23 hours per 200,000 worked, which shows considerable progress in a situation that was already good. At Hunterston, which is a decommissioning and storage site, four years have passed without a lost-time accident. At Dungeness A, no lost-time accidents for 3 million hours of work have been recorded. Berkeley has received awards from RoSPA. Sizewell has won an international safety award.
	What is there to learn from this? Two factors are involved, and other noble Lords touched on them. First, you need an employer which is dedicated, apart from to being a successful company, to health and safety. If it is dedicated to health and safety, it probably will be a successful company. Secondly, a measure of union ownership of the health and safety programme is necessary, as is the case at Sellafield and its sites. The chair of Sellafield's joint health and safety committee is a trade unionist and not a manager. For those noble Lords who are slightly doubtful about trade unions—most of them are not here today—I paraphrase Tony Hancock: not of all of us are out-of-sight Leftie Luddites. We are concerned about how we deal with these serious problems. They call for genuine trust and a genuine partnership between the unions and the employer. They have a common interest. Ownership of the job, I repeat, is important to all workers. We often seem to forget that. A bad accident rate loses contracts and livelihoods, as has been the case with those who were responsible for some of the railway tracks.
	There is a damaging belief these days that only management can manage, and that money and pay are the only things that matter. In all the surveys with which I was involved during my union career, pay was always second or third in importance. Rarely was it of first importance. The organisation and management of work was always among the top three issues.
	We should call on the Government to search for other good examples. The noble Lord, Lord Harrison, mentioned some. We should consider with the CBI and the TUC how best to attain the safety successes which have been seen in certain industries. I hope that the Minister will say that something along these lines can be carried out.

Lord Brett: My Lords, I, too, appreciate the endeavours of the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, in securing this debate and putting this important issue before us. I declare two interests. First, as the director of the International Labour Organisation for the United Kingdom and Ireland, I represent an organisation which sets international standards in the area of health and safety as well as in many others. As the general secretary for a decade of the then Institution of Professionals, Managers and Specialists—now Prospect—I represented a union which has some 95 per cent of the professional and technical staff of the Health and Safety Executive in its membership. In that decade, indeed before that, I learnt to appreciate the integrity, the skill and the dedication that exist at all levels of the Health and Safety Executive.
	Being the eighth person to speak in this debate, I knew in advance that much would have been said, most of it rather more eloquently than could I and certainly with greater expertise. It allows me the luxury of being able to agree with those who have spoken previously. I certainly agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker. I, too, am old enough to remember 1974, 1975 and 1976, the bringing about of the valuable 1974 Act and the creation of the Health and Safety Executive, of which I have been an unashamed fan for the past 30 years. I also agree with the noble Lord, Lord Christopher, about partnership in industry, particularly in industries which have a track record. You do not have to make the trade union case or the case for safety; it makes itself as a good company policy. Therefore, by joining together in partnership, you can improve both the safety and health of the employees and the well-being of the company.
	I agree with much of what the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, said, and I also share one of his concerns, which is a reduction of the inspection in the workplace. During the 1990s, as the general secretary of the union concerned, I experienced a whole raft of cuts across departments in the Civil Service. They were indiscriminate. The cuts were made to make economies—I am not making a party political point—but it meant that they were imposed on the Health and Safety Executive without too much regard for the damage that they were doing. The incoming Government in 1997 have taken a whole series of initiatives, all to be welcomed—many of them of great value—but the truth is that they have not restored the regime which, in the 1980s, provided for an expectation of an inspection in the workplace every four years, but which, in the 1990s, drifted out to one every eight years. It is not, to put it kindly, drifting back.
	Statistics produced by the HSE show the number of prosecutions, convictions, fines and enforcement notices. We have seen a trend of those numbers going down in the past year. This could be due to more effective management or better targeting. One of my favourite series of books is the Sherlock Holmes mysteries. Noble Lords will recall a dog that doesn't bark. The dog that doesn't bark here is the fact that I have not seen statistics about the number of inspections that have taken place. Therefore, is this reduction in prosecutions, convictions and enforcement notices due to a smaller number of inspections?
	Like the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, and others I am concerned about what has happened to the nature of the British workplace in the past 15 years. Some will say, "Ah, well, much of British industry—20 per cent—disappeared in the 1980s and a lot of manufacturing has gone in the past 10 years. Therefore, there are fewer reasons to have inspections; there are fewer places to inspect". That is not true. The decline has been the large industries, which were well organised in terms of health and safety and where safety representatives and management worked together. They were centres of high safety standards. Having served for the past 15 years on the governing body and as a director of the ILO, I pay tribute to the UK Government, because they have during the past 20 years established the United Kingdom as setting very high standards for health and safety worldwide. The example that we have set has been carried by British multinationals—to the credit of many of them—into developing countries and it has raised health and safety standards there more rapidly than would have been the case had domestic legislation in those countries been relied on.
	At home, what has happened? Big companies have demerged. We have seen a rash of outsourcing, whether we talk about the rail network or major multinationals. We outsource transport; we outsource everything from computing to HR services to grounds maintenance. That means that a lot of sub-contractors are employed. Many of them are small and trying to survive. If you talk to them about regulation, be it taxation, VAT or health and safety, they will complain of a burden of red tape. Therefore, they either do not know or do not want to know, in many cases, which regulations exist to which they should adhere. This is true in the case of health and safety. While prosecutions, fines and enforcement are important, they are the endgame.
	They are the tip of the iceberg. The real iceberg is the routine inspections, which not only find out what is wrong, but also advise companies on how to put things right and set them priorities. Small companies have to make priorities. Therefore, the advice, which is not that often sought, but which is available from an inspection, is of great value not only to the workers, but also to the employers. The fear is that a good employer, which is struggling to start up as a contractor or a sub-contractor, will not necessarily seek that advice. If the employer does not receive a visit from an inspector, it is not necessarily available.
	The rogue employer—sadly, many of them are about, particularly in construction sub-contracting and some other areas—can be confident that the chance of routine inspection is almost like winning the lottery. The employer will say, "Therefore, we don't have to care because we've got a long chance. When they come along, we say, 'Mea culpa'.". But before the "mea culpa", we may see the accidents and the deaths of workers. Therefore, it is important to ask how, in this more fragmented world, we can ensure that we have an adequate inspection regime, so that inspections take place not only when we have a major accident, but to prevent those accidents, major and minor, that occur far too often, particularly, as the noble Lord, Lord Christopher, said, in the construction industry. Therefore, I would be supportive, as I have been for many years, of the HSE. I know that it would wisely use resources, but my particular concern is about the inspection regime.

Lord Tunnicliffe: My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, for initiating this debate. Before I start, I declare my interest as chairman of the Rail Safety and Standards Board. I will speak about the risk to the safety, not health, of workers and the public in general. I was urged to speak in this debate because of my experience with the subject. I was 25 years in aviation, including 10 as an airline pilot. I was for 12 years the managing director of London Underground—I joined shortly after the King's Cross tragedy. For two years, I was chairman of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, and for three years I have been chairman of the Rail Safety and Standards Board, an organisation that is devoted to improving safety in the rail industry and to bringing the various parties together. I have a lot of experience, but I wonder whether I have wisdom. My increasing lack of certainty in recent years about the right answers leads me to some ideas that I would like to share with your Lordships today.
	I was introduced to the dilemmas of safety as a student when I was being taught to fly. My instructor said to me, "The key to air safety, Denis, is to lock the hangar door and throw away the key; after that, we take risks". The fact that risk is part of life comes home to you very early as a pilot. When I became managing director of London Underground and realised that I was responsible for an organisation that killed between five and 15 passengers a year, the whole issue of risk and personal responsibility suddenly came to me very firmly. Your reaction is to say that these deaths should not happen and that we must do what we can to stop them. Very rapidly, you start seeing yourself spending millions and millions of pounds making the organisation safer.
	Relatively rapidly, however, you realise that you could spend an infinite amount of money on making the organisation safe and that society simply cannot afford it. You are forced to the painful decision that the value of preventing a fatality is actually finite. Indeed, there is an acceptance of this fact among safety professionals—the current figure is about £1.5 million per fatality prevented, which aligns quite closely with the National Institute for Clinical Excellence figure of £30,000 to £50,000 per quality life year. Of course, you do not come by this figure—it is called the willingness-to-pay figure—by asking people whether they would die for £1.5 million, because the answer would clearly be no. What you do is observe their behaviours and the incremental risks that they take in their everyday lives, be it from crossing the road, from driving a car after having a drink—not above the limit—from speeding, from our love affair with transport and from all the incremental risks that we take with our lives to gratify our needs.
	We are in the dilemma of proportionality or balance—a dilemma that this House faces over and over again when looking at legislation. When it comes to safety at work and safety to the public, we are constantly trying to make this balance. There are two current solutions. One is prescription, which works remarkably well. In aviation, you do not decide how to make your airline safe; you do it the way you are told. There are international standards for constructing and operating aeroplanes and for licensing engineers and pilots. Similarly, the Fire Precautions Act 1971 tells you what to do. It is fairly prescriptive: you just obey the Act and you are deemed to have done enough on behalf of society to protect people from death and injury. The Road Traffic Acts are a suite of rules which are there to prevent death and injury.
	The Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 is quite different. It introduces the concept of the duty holder and the concept of reducing risk to as low as reasonably practical. The duty holder must make the decision and only on that decision will the Health and Safety Executive or the Health and Safety Commission decide whether the actions are sufficient. Nevertheless, the Health and Safety Commission and the Health and Safety Executive, working with the 1974 Act, have had stunning and powerful success, as other noble Lords have said, in bringing about great improvement and safety in most of industry and to railway passengers. Indeed, I think that many of us involved were quite comfortable about how the Act was operating, at least until around the turn of the century. At that point, the HSE produced the document Reducing Risks, Protecting People, whose aim was to help us to understand how to use the Act. The problem was that that brought in so much precaution and so many new risks—particularly the new risk of societal concern, which I still have trouble seeing as anything more than what was read on the front page of the Daily Mail after an accident—that it introduced the whole phenomenon of risk aversion.
	Risk aversion is generally powered by poor decision-making among employers. Nevertheless, the uncertainty in the Act feeds that risk aversion and poor decision-making. In turn, that poor decision-making causes costs and delays, damages operational performance and inhibits innovation. Worst of all, it creates derision. Sadly, "health and safety" is a phrase of derision in far too many places in our society, which actually reduces safety and causes accidents.
	One way round that problem is to have excellent safety leadership, of which we have heard one or two examples today. A business with excellent safety leadership is a very special business—at every level, from chairman, chief executive, directors and everywhere in the management chain through to the trade union partnership, safety is part of all decision-making. If you can achieve that, you can continue to achieve the balance. Sadly, many firms are too small or they take the view, "It won't happen to us", or they try to solve the problem by bad, risk-averse decisions. That leads to a sub-optimal position, with a lack of safety leadership and of clear regulation, which in turn leads to cost and/or risk.
	I reluctantly come to the view that we will have to bring certainty back into the equation. I believe that the certainty that we see in aviation or in fire regulations—modern, up-to-date, fit-for-purpose, sensible certainty—has to be part of the ongoing solution. The Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 and the HSE have done a brilliant job, but I am no longer convinced that they are fit for purpose. We should have a root-and-branch review of the Act. There certainly needs to be a widespread public debate, which needs take account of the partnership between the employer, workers and the public. At the end of the day, we need a set of laws and ways of enforcing them that are clear at all levels in our society. I believe that that certainty, with fit-for-purpose regulation, will bring better results in cost and safety for all members of our society.

Lord Lea of Crondall: My Lords, I apologise to my colleagues, particularly my former trade union colleagues, for having to slip out to see somebody at an inconvenient time during this debate.
	One theme that is moving rapidly up the agenda and which I would particularly like to address is that of older workers. The theme of older workers is increasingly being raised, partly because of the pensions crisis and partly because of the Green Paper on welfare which was welcomed this week. The national priority is to give a large percentage of older people the opportunity and, indeed, the encouragement to be in employment.
	The aspiration of getting an extra million people into employment comes against the background that, far from that being part of the trend for people in the 50 to 65 age bracket, the trend is going the other way. What is the reason for that? It has a lot to do with the occupational health theme of today's debate. My impression—I stand to be corrected—is that occupational health services laid on by employers are not as common an activity as they were. There is a resource question there but, again, we have to reverse a big trend to get the resources to employ older workers.
	What issues are involved in employing all these people? First, we know that GPs will be trying to agree new guidelines on giving out sick notes. Common sense suggests that three things will then be needed. First, there will have to be genuine jobs in all the regions for these people to go to. That is stating the obvious but let me state the obvious on something else. Secondly, those jobs will have to be geared to a lot of people whose state of health is such that employers would not have thought of them as ideal people to employ. However, in the future employers will not be able to offload millions of such people on to the welfare system. Thirdly—again, I state the obvious but sometimes one has to check that all the obvious points are in the equation—these people must be prepared to take the jobs, having regard to all the usual issues of pay and anti-social hours and so on. I speak as someone who has some difficulty, for example, with the Government's emphasis on the individual opt-out from the 48-hour working directive—a maximum brought in by the Working Time Directive under the health and safety clauses of the EU treaty. Incidentally, those are the same clauses that brought in the hugely popular right to four weeks' holiday paid up-front, which has been an enormous boost to millions of people—indeed, to all of us.
	We have to recognise that there is a huge health and safety connection between people's inclination to take employment and the issues facing employers. Shortly we will need to look urgently at the occupational health requirements in translating all the very good new policy developments into practice. That will perhaps follow the Green Paper on welfare and is not totally unconnected with the White Paper, which will come out in May, on the Adair Turner report on pensions.
	With a view to making some of those assertions, I thought that I had better do some homework and read about what the HSE programmes are doing at the moment. I echo what a number of noble Lords have said—the HSE programmes seem to be right up to the mark in addressing the issues that need to be addressed. Although I have questions about occupational health within employment, the HSE knows that work-related stress (13 million days lost) and what we might call backache-type disorders (12 million days lost) account for the large majority of the 2 million people who suffer from work-related ill health.
	The second generalisation arising from that is that in some respects, although it may seem paradoxical, health has always been harder to tackle than safety because often cause and effect are not so clearly linked. But where the link is established and exposure can be measured, such as when dealing with lead poisoning, then our traditional intervention techniques have worked well. The view of occupational health has now widened from exposure to hazardous materials and agents to cover common health problems. Those are not just work-related, but the HSC's strategy acknowledges that there is a huge job to be done and it flags up the need for a more strategic and partnership-based approach and a greater role for providing accessible advice and support, especially to smaller businesses.
	Workplace Health Connect is a new service developed by the HSE and will offer occupational health, safety and return-to-work advice to SMEs. The Workplace Health Connect branding and marketing will state that it is run by the HSE. Research shows that, while SMEs want authoritative advice, they are reluctant to approach the enforcing authorities for it directly. As an aside, talking about resources, we know that there has been a 35 per cent fall in the number of prosecutions of employers in the past three years and a 25 per cent drop in enforcement notices.
	Without getting into statistical questions, the idea that there is a growing regulatory burden is almost the reverse of what one might say is the broad picture to paint here, and I think that that is the policy echoed by the Government in the Green Paper. The advice will be given at three levels: at level 1 will be free advice with limited web support in England and Wales; at level 2, Pathfinders will provide free problem-solving workplace visits via employer requests in five areas covering about 40 per cent of England and Wales; and at level 3 there will be signposting to specialist support, for which businesses have to pay. The full roll-out in England and Wales is planned for 2008, and there are parallel initiatives for the rest of the United Kingdom.
	Therefore, the vision for the future, which I think we are all emphasising, is that we have to work through the consequences of a high level of employment for everyone of working age in terms of mental and psychological health and so on, all of which is very important. It is not a question of forcing people back to work; it is a question of finding the conditions where people's psychological as well as physical health can best be met by employment. The issue of work being recognised as important and beneficial obviously raises many wider questions about job satisfaction. We cannot go into that here but it is typically on the agenda of trade unions when they discuss such matters with employers. We have to ensure that there is an honest agenda relating to the causes of stress and other factors at work, although we are not going to wake up soon and find that we are living in Utopia.
	People have their own responsibilities. If you drink two or three bottles of red wine at night, you do not wake up in the best state to go to work the following morning. Obviously lifestyle choices from an early age come into this. But if we are to do a job on behalf of people at work—and on behalf of the national economy in the broadest sense in increasing productivity—we have to recognise that reducing health inequalities and social exclusion is a vital part of that. Equally vital is that people who wish to, and are fit to do so, should be able to work to a later age.

Lord Berkeley: My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Harrison on this debate. It is a very interesting subject that needs some careful airing, and certainly the speeches of noble Lords today have given it just that. I come to this subject originally from a construction industry background. I have worked on many construction sites around the world and recall working in Romania at the time of that lovely man, Mr Ceausescu, where the average construction worker had a litre of home-made wine and a loaf of bread for lunch. It did not help the accident rate after lunch. But that is not confined to Romania, and it is not confined to the construction industry.
	I commiserate with the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, on the lack of visible support behind him. Whether that has anything to do with it being the workers who tend to get injured and the owners who get some of the blame, I do not know, but I am sure that the noble Lord has lots of support in spirit.
	I believe that the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act has been a general success, as other noble Lords have said. I shall concentrate on transport, and reflect on the differences of application between different modes. The HSE is involved in air travel until you get to the finger pier, which is fine because the CAA then takes it over. The HSE is involved in maritime until you get over the water, more or less. It is totally involved in, or in charge of, rail. Although its responsibility is moving to the Office of Rail Regulation, it is still the same legislation. Then, as my noble friend Lady Gibson said, there is road transport.
	There is a certain lack of consistency in policy and application. I have been reflecting on the accident rates for deaths and serious injuries. My noble friend Lord Harrison said that there were about 2,000 deaths in industries that you might call under the responsibility of the HSE. Road deaths overall are 3,500. As my noble friend Lady Gibson said, the HSE believes that between 800 and 1,000 of those occurred at work, but I would argue that essentially everybody is at work when on the road. I therefore believe that 3,500 is a good figure—if you can call it good in that respect. On the railways, the figure is 10 to 20 a year. But the HSE has no responsibility for road transport. My noble friend said that RoSPA and others are doing great work on communication and information to try to get people to perform better on the roads, on which I commend them. My noble friend particularly mentioned those at work, including company car drivers, who have some of the worst records for road accidents.
	The missing element is enforcement, is it not? The HSE has told me that the regulations should be enforced by the police, but we all know that they are not. The police do very little enforcement. We heard about bicycles during Questions today—and it is a pity that none of the bicycle supporters had time to get in, but we hope to put that right on another occasion. We do not have traffic police. I sometimes think that, because of all their other activities, the police view road accidents and enforcement as a sort of spare-time occupation. That is not good enough. When more people are being killed on the roads than in any other work-related activity, something is seriously wrong.
	The noble Lord, Lord Harrison, gave the example of someone who was fined £20,000 over a death at work, if one can call it that. The value for preventable fatalities which the Government suggested should be used for road and rail deaths—that is, the value above which you do not invest to put right something that may have caused the accident, but below which you do—is £1.5 million. I know that the two figures are not directly related but there seems to be an awfully wide band between a £20,000 fine and the £1.5 million needed to put it right. It is another example of the lack of consistency in policies across the modes. I hope that that can be looked at in the future.
	The HSE has been involved in the railways for a long time, and one must give it credit for introducing new procedures, getting accident rates down and generally improving the structure of safety and enforcement. My view is that it has now gone over the top and that, as other noble Lords have said, it needs a review. But it does not need to be removed; it just needs to be reviewed, with a little more objectivity coming in. I have had discussions with some of those who work on the Rail Safety and Standards Board, of which my noble friend Lord Tunnicliffe is chair, about the values of preventable fatality and the whole business of level crossings which came up at various times during the Road Safety Bill debates. It is questionable whether a value for preventable fatality should apply to people who try to kill themselves whether it is actually suicide or people who weave in and out of level crossings and, unfortunately, kill themselves. Sometimes they cause other people to be killed as well. I am not convinced that, if you contribute to your own demise, society should contribute quite such a high amount of money to stop you doing it again—not that it would be you, sadly.
	The other problem that my noble friend Lord Tunnicliffe mentioned was about consistency and certainty. Safety on the railways is moving forward quite fast, but, rightly or wrongly, there is still a residue of the fear of prosecution. I am told that Network Rail's assessment of values for preventable fatality has resulted in a figure that is three times higher than the Government's specified maximum. That adds cost to the railways for no particular benefit. It may avoid prosecution but I think that we are well past that now. I hope that we can turn over a new leaf in the whole industry and move forward.
	As my noble friend said, certainty is very important. We need to encourage creativity in industry without affecting safety. There are things that can be done. We can look at methodologies for working on the railway on the Continent and in the United States and Canada, where they have some very good ideas. In Canada, a new set of points for signalling can be installed in four hours; it probably takes two days here. Much of it is safety-related because of the bureaucracy. I hope that we can now move forward. I congratulate the Government on putting the railways on a stable footing so that they can start to be creative and implement new ideas at significantly less cost.
	My noble friend Lord Harrison mentioned inspections. The railways get inspected ad nauseam. That is probably all right, but it costs money. Having an inspection once every 20 years is just as ridiculous. Having inspectors turn up unannounced is the best way of ensuring that management gets it right to start with. There is a great deal to be done.
	My last word is on Crown immunity. If we are to have corporate manslaughter in some shape or form, then—given the rather uncertain status of different organisations in transport regarding whether they are part of the Crown—an exception for the Crown would destroy the whole basis of the legislation. If legislation is to apply then it should apply to everybody.

Lord Oakeshott of Seagrove Bay: My Lords, I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, for the passion and commitment with which he opened this vital debate. As the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, pointed out, I am sorry to see that that view is not shared by the Conservatives. There has not been a single Conservative Back-Bench speaker, and for much of the debate, the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, has been sitting in splendid isolation on the Conservative Benches. I pay tribute, too, to the expertise of my noble friend Lady Neuberger, which shone through her speech, and to all noble Lords who have taken part in the debate. My noble friend did a devastating demolition job on the so-called process-driven approach.
	I was interested in the largely trade union-based speeches from the Labour Benches. In all cases, they spoke with great knowledge and experience. In my 18 years as a member of the Labour Party, the unions used to have names that one could recognise as unions. I now find it quite hard work. The noble Lord, Lord Brookman—or perhaps I should call him "brother Brookman"—laughed about British Steel changing to Corus. ISTC, Community and Prospect rather sound like Blairite think tanks.
	The noble Baroness, Lady Gibson of Market Rasen, spoke knowledgably on road safety; I particularly liked her "no mobiles when mobile" quote. The commitment of the noble Lord, Lord Brookman, to his members is transparent. The ISTC, under him and his predecessors like Bill Sirs, has always done a splendid job. The noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, gave a helpful—for me, as a new boy in this field—historical perspective on the development of health and safety legislation. The noble Lord, Lord Christopher, spoke with interest about problems in construction. I will come on to that later, because construction, together with farming, is obviously one of the really bad areas for accidents at work. The noble Lord, Lord Brett, spoke with great experience. Finally, and perhaps appropriately, the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, talked about construction with great knowledge. The noble Lord, Lord Lea of Crondall, also made his usual thorough and well researched speech on behalf of the TUC.
	The number of people killed at work last year was 220. That is four families a week blighted by a sudden death. Most of those deaths were utterly predictable and preventable. Work-related ill health and injury resulted in over 30 million days of absence from work. Statistically, half of these fatal injuries were in agriculture and construction—42 in agriculture and 71 in construction. I thought the noble Lord, Lord Christopher, made a good point in drawing attention to the language problems in construction, and how significant they are. However, anyone who knows the history of construction in this country knows that it has been riddled with bad employment practices and cowboys. Why can we not have proper, professional training apprenticeships in this country like they do in Germany or Sweden? For many years, the organisation of construction in this country has been a scandal, with results that we all see and the problems of house building.
	Looking at the overall statistics, there has been a steady decline in fatalities at work since the 1980s, but it seems to have got stuck since 2000. The latest Health and Safety Executive statistics show that there has been no clear trend in the number of fatal injuries since 2000:
	"The target has therefore not been met".
	Obviously, we would like the Minister's comments on that, and on whether the decline from the 1980s to 2000 reflected a genuine improvement in safety standards, or just the changing industrial structure, with the mines, shipyards, steel and heavy manufacturing declining so fast as part of our economy.
	As well as fatalities at work, there were 1,900 deaths last year from mesothelioma and asbestos-related diseases. Also, why does the Minister think that the regional gaps in ill health are so large? In the north-east, the rate is 5,700 per 100,000; in Wales it is 5,400, compared to only 3,500 in London and 4,100 in the eastern region. Did the Minister see the deeply depressing report in the Guardian, I think, yesterday or the day before, suggesting that about 8 million adults at work have a reading age of no more than 11? The safety implications of that hardly bear thinking about.
	Farming has not really been discussed in this debate. I have two or three questions. One interesting statistic—which relates to what the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, was saying about Romanian construction—is that it is clear that the number of deaths in farming increases during the morning, reduces over lunchtime and then steadily rises again during the afternoon. I would be interested to know if he has any thoughts on why that is. The rate of fatal injuries in farming is much higher for the self-employed—presumably farmers—compared to employees. I would be interested to know why that is. Finally, the official statistics estimate that the cost to society of accidents in farming, forestry and horticulture last year was £343 million.
	There are two or three other aspects of health and safety at work on which I would welcome the Minister's replies. There has been a good deal of work done by concerned people. I pick out a list of 12 suggestions for improving safety, which were published in an article in the New Law Journal in 2000 by Stephanie Trotter from the Centre of Corporate Accountability. She suggested, for example, that all companies should have to register the name of their insurer with Companies House. That would be a useful contribution to corporate transparency and accountability. Has it been considered and, if so, why has it not been implemented?
	On corporate responsibility, I strongly support the suggestion that all directors and senior managers should have a mandatory duty to take reasonable care of employees and members of the public likely to be affected by the work of the company. Decent directors do this already, and such a duty would only affect the small number of directors who do not really care about the health and safety of their workers or consumers.
	Workers in the gas and emergency services are at risk of gas and carbon monoxide poisoning, as they have no equipment to test for carbon monoxide. People are told to turn off their appliances and open the windows, but not everyone does that. Indeed, people can get confused—and people poisoned in that way can be pretty confused anyway. Five people have died of accidental carbon monoxide poisoning in the past week. This a pressing problem that will not go away. What is the response of the Minister and the Health and Safety Commission?
	My noble friend Lady Neuberger referred to a speech by the Prime Minister in 2005. Some of it may have been good, but one section was most unimpressive. I have already had to investigate it, because there was a throwaway line suggesting that it was not important to regulate the selling of pensions—that has had to be effectively withdrawn. The section on health and safety which concerned me, however, was when he said:
	"Something is seriously awry when . . . health and safety rules across a range of areas is taken to extremes".
	Which areas did he have in mind? That is a serious statement from a Prime Minister about an agency of his own Government. Does the Minister agree with the Prime Minister? If so, can he give examples? If not, what representations has the DWP made to Number 10 to stop this sort of casual comment on the work of the HSE?

Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, this has been an interesting debate, as one might expect from one introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Harrison. As for the rather snide remarks of the noble Lords, Lord Berkeley and Lord Oakeshott of Seagrove Bay, my job is to represent the views of my colleagues. They do not have to listen to me do it.
	There has been a certain amount of experience expressed from the Members of your Lordships' House with trade union backgrounds on the Benches opposite. My party does not have that sort of expertise, but it has a certain amount of expertise in employment, and as employers, which I hope to reflect.
	The facts on the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act since it became law in 1974 have been fairly well aired, not least by the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, and great improvements in that area have been made. In that year there were some 651 fatal injuries to employees in the production industry and in some service industries. The comparable figure for 2002–03 was 182, a reduction of over 70 per cent, at a time when the workforce has grown by 12 per cent.
	Internationally, as I am sure the Minister will tell us, Great Britain has the second lowest number of industrial fatal injuries, at 1.7 per 100,000 workers compared with the EU average of 2.8. That is the good news. Although there is some doubt about the figures, which I hope the Minister will clear up for us, I am told that the bad news is that despite a decrease of 7 per cent from the previous year, 2004–05 saw 220 fatal injuries to workers, around half of which occurred in two industries, the construction industry and the agriculture, forestry and fishing industry. How wrong the agriculture lobby was in the early years not to be involved in this. I am not sure where driving for work fits in but, as the noble Baroness, Lady Gibson, said, it must make up a significant proportion of the rest. Your Lordships are absolutely right to say that we cannot be complacent. As John Donne said all those years ago,
	"Any man's death diminishes me".
	Many years ago there was a popular song with the most infuriating music, which I would be out of order, I am sure, to sing in your Lordships' House.

Noble Lords: Oh!

Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, there is a point to this. Its chorus was,
	"Accidents will happen, when you least expect them,
	"Accidents will happen, time and time again".
	No one could have anticipated the explosion at Buncefield. Although it could have been much worse, it still caused serious injury to one person and minor injuries to several others. That accident, of course, should not have happened at all. I hope the internal investigation into what went wrong, which is currently under way, will result in a constructive report to ensure that such a damaging and expensive incident does not happen again, rather than an exercise in blame avoidance, which is all too common unfortunately in cases where the investigators are investigating themselves, as is the case here. The investigation should also not be used as an excuse to layer yet another set of procedures and rules on heavily burdened employers.
	I do not want to give the impression that I think health and safety regulations are not a good thing. Since 1974, governments of all persuasions have produced a whole raft of orders and regulations, both about material safety—for example, banisters on loft stairs—and the training of the workforce, including one fairly recently about a training course on climbing a ladder. Training and retraining at work, as we were told by the noble Lord, Lord Christopher, is very important.
	Some of the demands, regulations, rules, and so on, may be resented by employers. Indeed, they come at a cost, but is it not a cost worth paying if it avoids the loss of an employee, either temporarily or, as sometimes regretfully happens, permanently? As I know from bitter experience, although not like the noble Lord, Lord Brookman, in the steel industry, the ongoing costs of employment are far cheaper than the replacement costs. Is it not worth paying just a bit to limit, as far as possible, the possibility of being sued, often at great expense? Even so, the cost of employers' compulsory liability insurance continues to rise despite all these courses, material safety measures and risk assessment strategies which are flagged up by both government and the insurance industry as being the best way to ease the impact of that insurance.
	The noble Lord, Lord Brett, highlighted the frequency of inspections by HSE which was first raised by the noble Lord, Lord Harrison. I doubt that they will reduce insurance costs. I wonder whether the reduction in prosecutions, mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Lea, is a consequence of that or is that being too cynical. However, they wake up both the employers and the workforce. Even with all that, accidents of all kinds remain depressingly far too numerous. It is clearly the responsibility of the employer to look after his workforce and to notice and then to stop any unsafe practices that he sees. I am very much afraid that those will still go on in the workplace, however efficient and prescient the training. It is inevitable that, from time to time, some members of staff are rather slipshod in their attention to detail and any of us can be forgetful or even pigheaded occasionally. That is human nature. Nevertheless, workers quite correctly expect this duty of care from their employers as a right.
	However, as I pointed out on another subject on Tuesday, and as the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, reinforced in her excellent speech, with rights go obligations. There is an obligation on an employee to take care, not only of his own safety, but also that of his fellow workers. I was glad to see that the Health and Safety Executive has a rather obscurely named strategic enabling programme to encourage workers to get involved with the health and safety rules in their workplace. Encouraging workers to take responsibility for health and safety rules is a positive step forward to prevent necessary but mundane tasks being ignored. If employees, as the noble Baroness, Lady Gibson, said, have a significant role in the preparation of the regulations, they are more likely to appreciate their significance and ensure that they are not unnecessarily restrictive or burdensome. Employees—indeed anyone—are only likely to obey such regulations when they feel that they make sense to them, as the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, pointed out, although his suggestion of unions initiating new regulations is perhaps a little over the top.
	These days we live in a risk-averse society, bolstered by the culture of compensation. From birth we are protected as far as possible from harming ourselves and each other and children do not seem to learn the lessons of cause and effect. The noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, produced a quote, so I do not see why I should not, especially as I think that this is what the Minister was referring to when he said in a speech on health and safety last year,
	"I am married to a teacher and we have school age children. Like other parents . . . I expect them to come home in one piece. I don't want to get a silly note from the school telling me they grazed their knee in the playground and needed a bandage. I want my children to learn and develop, getting the same sense of enjoyment that I did at school. And that involves a degree of rough and tumble. Once again there is a balance that needs to be struck between paperwork burden and risk".
	Risk assessment and risk aversion were highlighted by the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, but you cannot perform either if you have not learnt risk recognition. That is a vital point.
	The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, is the Minister in charge of health and safety and we are lucky to have him in this House answering this debate. How will he achieve his clear objective of allowing what he called "rough and tumble" and avoiding the over-protectiveness that we see around us every day? Steps to prevent a further increase in the cost of insurance for schools, without going to the ridiculous step of banning activities such as conkers because they could be dangerous, are desperately needed if children are to have any chance of enjoying a childhood that is not reminiscent of being brought up in a padded cell.
	Everyone else seems to have produced a little story, but I see that I have run out of time, so I will not. We parliamentarians, aided by the Health and Safety Commission and its arm the Health and Safety Executive, are the only people who can send out a message that enough is enough. I hope that this debate will strongly do just that, and if it means changing the law, as it well might, the Minister can introduce a Bill to that effect. Will he be brave enough to grasp the nettle?

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: My Lords, this has been a good debate and I thank my noble friend Lord Harrison for enabling us to debate some important issues. I also thank all noble Lords who took part. I am disappointed not to hear the story of the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale. I am even more disappointed not to hear him sing. No doubt we will have that pleasure in future.
	This is a serious matter. The most recent annual figures show that 220 workers were killed. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Oakeshott, that many, if not all, of those deaths were avoidable. That is a striking statistic, as is the statistic that 150,000 other injuries occurred to employees during that year. Although the focus of today's debate has been on deaths and accidents, I want to take this opportunity to talk about wider workplace health issues. Surveys show that about 2 million people suffer from an illness that they believe to be caused or made worse by work and that more than a quarter of the new cases occurred in the latest 12-month period.
	Of course, we can all be proud of what has been achieved in the past 30 years. My noble friend Lady Whitaker referred to the start of legislation in this area in the Victorian age. We are all proud of what has been achieved since 1974. There have been significant advances. In answer to the noble Lord, Lord Oakeshott—it is a question that I have asked—I do not think that they can be dismissed as simply the product of structural change. I am convinced that they are real advances. My noble friend Lord Brookman gave graphic details of the conditions in the steel industry 30, 40 and 50 years ago. What a huge difference we have seen in those years. We should be proud of the commissioners and the officers of the Health and Safety Executive. Having worked with them for about eight months, I think that they are a truly magnificent British achievement. We should acknowledge that.
	We cannot be complacent. The figures that I quoted are stark. As the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, said, Buncefield was a vivid reminder of the need to be alert at all times. He will know that the noble Lord, Lord Newton, is the independent chair of the board that is considering these matters. We await its report with interest, not only in relation to what happened at Buncefield, but also in relation to any lessons that need to be learnt about the regulation of highly hazardous areas, of which we have many in this crowded country. It is important that we learn the lessons of Buncefield.
	The current approach and targets of the Health and Safety Commission are reflected in the Revitalising Health and Safety Strategy Statement. The targets run for a 10-year period from 2000. They are to reduce the incidence of fatal and major injuries by 10 per cent; to reduce the incidence of work-related ill health by 20 per cent; and to reduce the number of working days lost from injury and ill health per 100,000 workers by 30 per cent. These are challenging targets; there is no question about it. How far have we achieved them? The realistic answer, according to the analysis by our statisticians, is a mixed bag. On fatal and major injuries, there is no evidence of change and therefore the halfway target has not been met. We think that the ill health target has probably been met and the days lost target has possibly been met. I am very careful to use those words because we cannot give a precise explanation or analysis yet. The injury figures look stubbornly flat, although the ill health figures offer great promise. That means that to achieve the 2010 targets, we—the commission, the executive and all those involved, both employees and employers—will have to work very hard indeed to make sure that we deliver on these targets.
	My noble friend Lady Gibson and the noble Lord, Lord Brett, said that the modern working environment that we are attempting to achieve through these targets is very different from that of 1974. The commercial and industrial structure of this country has changed enormously. There are fewer large firms and more small businesses, and less manufacturing and more service industries. The labour market has also changed: there are more women in the workforce, more part-time working and more self-employment, which has been discussed by a number of noble Lords. There is a greater use of agencies and there are flexible working patterns. In many ways, these changes are to be welcomed. They are a reflection of the dynamic economy that we need to have to prosper in future. But moving away from the traditional structures of industry poses real challenges in the health and safety arena. They are the great challenges that we have to consider and work on over the next five years if we are to meet the targets.
	Before addressing some of the specific questions I was asked, I shall respond to my noble friend Lord Lea who very astutely pulled together all the policy strands of my department—pensions, welfare reform, and health and safety—in a cohesive round. He very kindly did not mention the Child Support Agency, but perhaps even there we can weed it in. He is right that statistics show that occupational health needs further development. In health and safety, the emphasis has always been on safety. We need to maintain that emphasis and do much more in relation to occupational health. The Green Paper that we published two days ago, which will lead to legislation in due course, reflects that.
	The number of people on incapacity benefit points to the need for employers to do much more to analyse the health issues facing their employees. We also need to see a development of occupational health services. Only 15 per cent of employers have what could be described as an occupational health service. It is actually worse than that: analysis by the Health and Safety Executive shows that only about 3 per cent of employees have decent occupational health services, where, if an employee is off sick through stress or back injury, when he comes back to work he will be seen immediately, given rehabilitation and enabled to get back to work as quickly as possible. That is the approach that is needed and we have to encourage it. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, that the National Health Service itself needs to learn a considerable amount about how to deal with its staff. Some NHS organisations have done very well. I commend the Leeds Mental Health Trust for its fantastic work in dealing with sickness absence in a holistic way with the support of its staff. We need to encourage more organisations to do likewise.
	If we are to tackle occupational health issues and meet the targets that embrace the new structure of work, we have to deal with small and medium-sized enterprises. This is the big gap in our health and safety approach at the moment. If we look at the big companies, in the main, they do very well. They recognise that investment in health and safety is not only good for their employees, but good for the bottom line. But with SMEs, there is a real challenge. That is why my noble friend Lord Lea was so right to mention the Workplace Health Connect scheme that will start very shortly to give free advice to SMEs.
	We have had an interesting discussion about the issues of inspection and enforcement. There have been two strands in this debate. Some noble Lords have cautioned that if we are so risk-averse that we lead companies down to an ultra-safety-first culture, it could an have a big impact on their productivity and on UK plc. On the other hand, if we do not have inspections and are not prepared to prosecute, we will not have the right structure and culture in which to tackle serious health and safety problems. Let me say at once to my noble friend Lord Harrison and to the noble Lord, Lord Brett, that a fall in prosecution figures was indicated in the latest Health and Safety Executive reports. The Health and Safety Executive undoubtedly devoted about the same amount of resource to investigation and enforcement activities as in previous years. The drop in prosecutions and notices appears to reflect a reduction in fatalities and reported injuries—which is good news—and better targeting of the HSE's enforcement efforts. It is tending to focus on more serious incidents where it would also have successful prosecutions. Therefore the number of successful prosecutions arising from investigations is, in fact, increasing.
	I can also report that the executive has improved working relationships with the police on manslaughter investigations, which account for about 10 per cent of HSE's investigation and enforcement resource. It is too early to draw any hard and fast conclusions from that, but I have met the commission and the executive to discuss those figures. I am keeping a close eye on them, as is Bill Callaghan, the excellent chair of the Health and Safety Commission. I can assure your Lordships that there is no complacency there.
	On inspections, one has to be cautious about simply using the number of inspections as an indicator of the success or failure of the Health and Safety Executive. We must focus on outcomes, not outputs, but inspections will remain an important part of a broad range of interventions that the HSE may use. I think the HSE would say that its inspections are targeted at the areas of highest risk, and that that philosophy underpins all that it does.
	I emphasise that inspection and enforcement remain important activities for the Health and Safety Executive. I have made it clear; I expect it to be tough on those businesses that wilfully break the law and put people at risk. Where conditions are poor, or there is blatant disregard for the law, inspectors will not hesitate to use their powers to require the necessary improvements. Nor will they hesitate to prosecute where that is required. If someone has been killed, the expectation is that prosecution will follow—unless the evidence does not support it, or it is judged not to be in the public interest. I assure your Lordships that I attach great importance to enforcement; undoubtedly, it remains an important tool in securing compliance.
	I also agree with my noble friend Lord Harrison that the penalties currently available are too low. There is no question but that the average health and safety fine imposed by the courts is too low to reflect serious offences properly. The Government are committed to raising maximum health and safety penalties when there is a legislative opportunity, which I am personally keen to find.
	I have noted the comments of my noble friend Lady Whitaker and other noble Lords on corporate manslaughter. Noble Lords have referred to the fact that pre-legislative scrutiny has begun on the draft Bill. The Home Affairs and Work and Pensions Select Committees have taken the time to do that excellent work. We are considering the committees' report and aim to respond shortly. I should also make clear that the Government are keen to see the Bill taken forward quickly and will do that when parliamentary time allows.
	The noble Lord, Lord Oakeshott, commented on director duties. That matter is currently being considered by the Health and Safety Commission, but it is important not to legislate in a way which, far from taking a proportionate approach, would then lead to defensive action by companies. That is one point of issue about the commission's current work. I believe that a report will be going from the executive to the commission on that matter in April.
	On carbon monoxide poisoning, thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Oakeshott, I have met a number of the organisations concerned. It was a good meeting and a review will be undertaken of CORGI in which some of those issues can be considered. I have also discussed the need to do more research in that area with both the Health and Safety Executive and CORGI. I hope to get some improved research, because one problem is whether we know how many people have actually been affected by such poisoning.
	My noble friend Lord Harrison mentioned disturbing incidents of work-related violence. Again, it was the Health and Safety Executive, through the health service advisory committee, which really began tackling the issue of violence at work. It began to get good detail in quantified statistics. The good news there is of a significant drop in reported incidents, from 1.3 million to 655,000 over the past 10 years. Again, we cannot be complacent and must keep up the pressure there.
	I noted that my noble friend Lord Berkeley rightly said that the railways are transferring from the HSE. I will ensure that his comments are transferred to the Railway Inspectorate.
	The noble Lord, Lord Oakeshott, asked about regional differences relating to occupational health. It is partially linked to the distribution of different types of industry, but that does not account for all differences. The HSE is investigating that to see what lessons can be learnt. My noble friend Lord Harrison mentioned Scotland. We have just set up an advisory committee there to help collaboration between stakeholders in Scotland—the Scottish Parliament, Ministers, industry and trade unions. It will be looking at the Scottish figures and what can be done about those.
	On agriculture, the HSE is unaware of the reasons for links to the time of day. It is obviously interested in looking further into that; it may be related to the kind of work which takes place on farms—although, living in Birmingham, I would not claim great expertise in such matters. I would hesitate to debate that with the experts on farming here in your Lordships' House.
	Clearly, the substantive issue, as mentioned by my noble friends Lady Whitaker and Lord Christopher, is the fatal accident rate, which is very disappointing. The Health and Safety Executive believes, based on the last annual figures available, that it was the result of unwise risk-taking. That continues to be a problem, but is also compounded by poor weather conditions. Many farmers welcome advice and respond well to it, but there is a real challenge. The HSE runs free half-day sessions for farmers up and down the country, and those work very well. Another issue is the self-employed; contractors bring many self-employed people onto farms. That remains a priority for the executive.
	With regard to construction, there is good news and bad. The good news is that rates have come down. I have visited some sites and I know that many reputable companies have done very well in improving safety. That is not just for their own employees, but for the many contractors who come onto sites. Yet the cowboys remain, and that area also remains one of great importance for the Health and Safety Executive. I recently met the newly appointed chief inspector of construction and emphasised to him my support for the measures that the executive will be taking in future.
	My noble friend Baroness Gibson raised the issue of road transport. I pay tribute to her for her presidency of RoSPA, and to RoSPA for its marvellous work—and for its wisdom in choosing Birmingham for its headquarters. Long may it stay there. I understand the road safety issue. It is not true to say that the Health and Safety Executive is not involved or does not work in this area. We are working with the Department for Transport. We will approach RoSPA to help to develop some transport management standards. My noble friend Lady Gibson mentioned the joint guidance document, Driving at Work: Managing work-related road safety. I can say to my noble friend that we will shortly have the publication of a protocol, with the Association of Chief Police Officers, which will help liaison and co-operation. The RIDDOR review will consider whether to make work-related road traffic accidents reportable, which, if it did, would lead in to the enforcement measure. I have to say that I have an open mind on that. I do not want to give too optimistic a view, but it is being considered.
	There has been an increase in funding in terms of total expenditure from the forecast out-turn in 2004–05 of £271 million, up to £287 million for 2005–06. It will remain at that level over the three-year period. I recognise the importance of trade union representatives. I understand the issue about roving representatives. There are some issues about whether turning representatives, essentially, into informal enforcement officers is the approach that should be taken. It is clear that where there are good safety representatives, there is often good health and safety. We need to encourage that more.
	On the risk-averse debate, of course my right honourable friend the Prime Minister and I are at one. I do not know how the noble Lord, Lord Oakeshott, could possibly suggest any different. My right honourable friend was referring to the very point that the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, referred to; that is, the problem of ultra risk-averse behaviour. This has not been laid down by the Health and Safety Executive. The HSE is as concerned as anyone about it. Risk-averse behaviour gets in the way of focusing on the most important safety issues. The risk-averse behaviour that we all condemn will have had nothing to do with stopping serious injuries or fatal accidents at work. So the Health and Safety Executive is at one with the noble Baroness in seeking to remove this awful risk-aversion behaviour that one can see among so many public authorities in this country.
	It is not the health and safety inspectorate that is causing this to happen. We have a problem sometimes with health and safety advisers. I commend IOSH, the professional body for safety practitioners, which is at one with us. I also believe that the education of young people is important. We need to educate managers to make common-sense judgments, not simply to implement over-cautious advice. I thought that my noble friend Lord Tunnicliffe made a very interesting and reflective speech. He made some very important points about risk aversion. I am not sure that I am with him on a revision of legislation, but I want to encourage further dialogue between him and the Health and Safety Commission. We have already had one meeting.
	In conclusion—my time is up—this has been an excellent debate. All noble Lords who have taken part have contributed highly. We are all agreed that we should be very proud of health and safety in this country and that we do not want to be risk averse. But we are also agreed that we cannot be complacent. I am sure that we can go forward with that strength and encouragement. With that, I suggest that we should acknowledge the tremendous work of the Health and Safety Commission and Executive.

Lord Harrison: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for his splendid and comprehensive reply about a very serious issue and debate. I would also like to thank all colleagues who contributed with such widespread knowledge. Because it has been serious, I should like to end on a lighter note. I regret that the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, was unable to sing the piece that he wanted to sing or to tell his short story. Perhaps I will present the short story, but I will not sing it.
	My closing remarks earlier referred to the conduct of orchestras and the loss of hearing by those who play in them, as a result of excess decibels. I should like to relate to your Lordships the interesting and cautionary tale relating to a failure to have proper training in the instruments used for common work. I refer to Jean Baptiste Lully, who was the Italian-French composer and conductor in the court of Louis XIV. In those days, the smaller baton was not in use. A long stick was used to beat time in order to ensure that the orchestra was playing in harmony and together. So carried away was Jean Baptiste Lully with one of his best compositions that he raised the stick in the air, brought it down hard, stabbed himself in the foot and died of gangrene five days later. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the Motion for Papers.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Afghanistan

Lord Drayson: My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall repeat a Statement made in another place by my right honourable friend the Defence Secretary. The Statement is as follows:
	"With your permission Mr Speaker, I would like to make a Statement on the deployment of UK forces to Afghanistan. Just over four years ago, on 11 September 2001, we were given a brutal lesson in the consequences of leaving Afghanistan in the grip of the Taliban and the terrorists. Since then, we in this country have been at the forefront of the international effort, under the auspices of the United Nations, to defeat international terrorism, to free Afghanistan from the ruthless grip of the Taliban and to rid the country of the menace of the terrorists and the greed of the drugs traffickers.
	"This will not be achieved by military means alone. So, although today's Statement deals with the military elements of this deployment, we in the British Government have undertaken an unprecedented degree of cross-governmental co-ordination to ensure that this is a fully-integrated package addressing governance, security, and political and social change. I am grateful for the involvement of my right honourable friends the Foreign Secretary, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury and the Secretary of State for International Development.
	"Last September, I visited Afghanistan. I saw for myself the real hope that the international community has brought to a new generation of Afghans: the hope that at last the Afghan people can rebuild their country and the hope that Afghanistan can take its rightful place as a country where men and women—both of them—can live in peace and freedom with real hope for a better future.
	"We cannot risk losing these achievements. We cannot risk Afghanistan once again becoming a sanctuary for terrorists. We have seen where that leads, be it in New York or here in London. We cannot ignore the opportunity to bring security to a fragile but vital part of the world and we cannot go on accepting Afghan opium being the source of 90 per cent of the heroin which is applied to the veins of the young people of this country. For all these reasons, it is in our interests, as the UK, and as a responsible member of the international community, to act.
	"In helping Afghanistan, we cannot look to resolve just one of these issues—everything connects. Stability depends on a viable, legitimate economy. That depends on rooting out corruption and finding real alternatives to harvesting opium. That means helping Afghanistan develop judicial systems, develop her infrastructure and the capability to govern herself effectively, which, in turn, brings stability and security.
	"That is where there is a clear role for the military: helping to maintain and create a framework of security on which legitimate Afghan institutions can grow and thrive. And NATO—the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation—through its leadership of the International Security Assistance Force—the ISAF—itself under the auspices of the United Nations, has a major role to play in making that happen.
	"Thanks to NATO's leadership, the ISAF has already expanded its activities to cover the north and west of Afghanistan, at the request of the democratically elected Afghan Government and with the authorisation of the United Nations. It now stands on the brink of expanding its operations into Southern Afghanistan as part of a planned, pre-envisaged and phased expansion—stage 3. I believe that NATO is now in a position to take those plans forward.
	"Our Allies are playing their part in ISAF. In the north we shall hand over responsibilities to Germany, Finland, Sweden and Norway. In the west, Italy and Spain lead the ISAF, where Lithuania and the US also provide forces. In the south, the US, Canada and Romania already have troops stationed, Estonia has pledged forces, the Danish Parliament is examining a proposal to send forces—I spoke to their Minister this morning—and we are optimistic that the Dutch, whose Minister I also spoke to this morning, will also deploy troops. Australia and New Zealand may also provide forces.
	"On the ground and in the air this is a truly international and multinational force. The US, for example, has offered to provide attack helicopters and support helicopters, and we know that other countries are considering providing fast jets and transport aircraft.
	"We need that broad level of international support. We need the capabilities and forces, because ISAF expansion is no small task. Southern Afghanistan is undeniably a more demanding area in which to operate than the north and west. The Taliban remains active. The authority of the Afghan Government and the reach of their security forces are still weak. The influence of the drugs traffickers, by contrast, is strong. ISAF must therefore be prepared to meet these challenges. It means different forces and it may mean different tactics, not because we want to wage war—that is not our aim. Provincial reconstruction teams, PRTs, building up Afghans' capacity, will remain at the core of our expansion within ISAF into the south, just as it was in either the north or the west. But just as the threat is greater, so must be our ability and willingness to deter, and to defend against, attack. The capabilities and experience of our armed services, to whom I again pay tribute, make us well placed to help the ISAF do both.
	"We have previously announced one decision—the decision to deploy the Headquarters Group of the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps to lead the ISAF from May 2006 to February 2007. ISAF will be, via NATO, under a British command, General Richards. It will be supported by elements of 1 Signal Brigade, including troops from 7 and 16 Signal Regiments and the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps Support Battalion. This alone means a commitment of over 1,000 troops towards the headquarters based in and around Kabul.
	"We are also preparing for a deployment to southern Afghanistan. Next month 39 Regiment Royal Engineers will deploy to Helmand province to build an encampment for our main deployment. A company from 42 Commando Royal Marines will provide protection and three CH-47 Chinook support helicopters from 18 (B) Squadron, Royal Air Force, will offer essential lift and mobility in a part of Afghanistan largely without roads. All told, between now and July we shall send some 850 additional personnel to help prepare for our deployment.
	"That main deployment will have at its heart a new, British-led PRT at Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province. As in the north, the PRT will be based on a triumvirate of the British military commander and officials from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Department for International Development respectively.
	"So, we are working to ensure that we provide Afghanistan with a seamless package of democratic, political, developmental and military assistance in Helmand. All of that is necessary to ensure that international terrorism never again has a base in Afghanistan.
	"We are working to make sure our goals are Afghan goals too. Assisting Afghan counter-narcotics, for instance, is an obvious example. We help them and we help ourselves at the same time. As I mentioned earlier, 90 per cent of the heroin injected into the veins of our young people originates in Afghanistan. Helmand province is the largest single source of opium in Afghanistan.
	So we can help to train Afghan counter-narcotics forces and support their operations. We can provide intelligence. We can assist the Afghan Government in explaining their policies to the people. Above all, we can, along with and in support of the Afghans, create the environment in which economic development and institutional reform—which, I emphasise again, are both essential to the elimination of the opium industry—can take place.
	"The range of the PRT is large. The PRT will be a part of a larger British force providing the framework of security, over 3,300 strong and which itself will come under a new Multinational Brigade (South), which will initially be under Canadian, alternating with British, command.
	"Our contribution, the Helmand task force, will include elements of the Headquarters of 16 Air Assault Brigade and an airborne infantry battle group. Based initially around the 3rd Battalion Parachute Regiment, it will incorporate a force of eight Apache attack helicopters, provided by 9 Regiment Army Air Corps—the first time we have deployed this impressive new capability on an operation; 9 Regiment will also supply four Lynx light utility helicopters, while 27 Squadron, Royal Air Force, will provide a detachment of six Chinook support helicopters.
	"Other major units and capabilities include Scimitar and Spartan armoured vehicles from the Household Cavalry Regiment, a battery of 105-mm light guns from 7th Parachute Regiment Royal Horse Artillery, a battery of Desert Hawk unmanned aerial vehicles from 32 Regiment Royal Artillery, 13 Air Assault Regiment and 29 Regiment of the Royal Logistics Corps, 7 Battalion Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers and 16 Close Support Medical Regiment. We shall also deploy four additional Royal Air Force C-130 Hercules transport aircraft.
	"It is a substantial package, supported by our Chiefs of Staff, designed to maximise our chances and to minimise the danger.
	"We aim for these deployments to be fully operational by July this year. The total number of all our troops in Afghanistan—those already there, the new HQ for ISAF, the Helmand task force and the temporary surge engineering capability—will fluctuate over the next few months. It will peak, briefly, at around 5,700, before reducing to under 4,700 as the engineers building the camps in Helmand and, on current plans, as our Harrier GR7 detachment, withdraw in July and June, respectively. Our forces will then comprise those needed to command the ISAF, some 300 troops engaged in support and training tasks in Kabul, and the Helmand task force. Predominantly, they will be regular troops. There will be, however, a small number of reservists, most drawn either from the Royal Rifle Volunteers or from the 4th Battalion Parachute Regiment.
	"I want to make a few things clear. The size and structure of the task force has been guided by a careful assessment of the likely tasks and threats it will face. What matters is that we put the right forces in to do the job and to do it safely and well, and I make no apology for that. So, attack helicopters are certainly formidable but they are also necessary. The roads in Helmand are very poor, making support helicopters essential. They in turn need attack helicopters to protect them and the forces they deploy.
	"Let me stress once more: we are deploying this potent force to protect and deter. The ISAF mission is unchanged. It is focused on reconstruction. The resources for all this will be made available. This will be a three-year deployment; it will cost around £1 billion, over a five-year period, and the resources will be made available commencing in this financial year.
	"As I said earlier, we have a clear strategic interest in the renewal of Afghanistan. Obviously, that informed our decision. Equally, we have similar interests elsewhere, and in maintaining effective and capable Armed Forces. We took careful account of those factors too, including other commitments. This deployment is manageable alongside our wider commitments, including those in Iraq. It does not require draw-down in Iraq; that will be based on the conditions in Iraq itself.
	"In terms of command and control, to begin with, the multinational brigade will come under the coalition. This is a necessary transitional measure. It happened when we established our first PRT in the northern city of Mazar-e Sharif in 2003. Of course, Canadian, Romanian and US forces are already serving in the south. But those of other Allies, such as Denmark and Estonia—and, I hope, the Netherlands—need time to build up sufficient forces in southern Afghanistan to implement ISAF's expansion into the region, just as we do. I therefore anticipate that later this year, at the earliest opportunity, ISAF will take control of the forces in the south, during our command of ISAF.
	"All this has but one aim—a secure, stable, prosperous and democratic Afghanistan free from terrorism and terrorist domination. Whatever the difficulties and risks—and I do not hide them from the House or the country—those risks are nothing compared to the dangers to our country and our people of allowing Afghanistan to fall back into the clutches of the Taliban and international terrorism. We will not allow that. And the Afghan people will not allow that.
	"The Afghans have already made great strides towards achieving a new future—they have a democratically elected president and Assembly. They have a democratically elected Parliament. Their legitimate economy is growing. Children—boys and girls—are back at school and refugees are returning home.
	"I would be the first to accept that there is a long way to go. Expanding ISAF into the south is but the next step. We have pledged to help the Afghan people as they continue on that journey. That we should do, and that we will do".
	My Lords, that concludes the Statement.

Lord Astor of Hever: My Lords, it is right that NATO should be engaged in Afghanistan in our common cause. It is right that this country should, for a second time, accept the responsibilities of leading this operation. Afghanistan must never again be allowed to serve as a terrorist haven. We on these Benches have no difficulty in endorsing these propositions.
	We thank the Minister for repeating the Statement, but he will understand that the long-awaited information that he has now been able to give the House does not allay all our anxieties and concerns and those which will arise among the public. We trusted Her Majesty's Government on Iraq; we need to be more careful with Afghanistan. There are further detailed questions that must be asked of the Government about the proposed deployment, and it is essential that clear answers are given.
	Are Her Majesty's Government convinced that we are deploying enough troops to achieve the stated objectives? What contingency plans have been made to increase the number of troops if things go wrong? If there is a gap in numbers because one country fails or backs out, will the UK fill in?
	We welcome the Statement's confirmation that the tasks will include assisting Afghan counter-narcotics initiatives. One of the greatest threats to Afghanistan is the alarming rate of poppy production. The UK was meant to have taken the lead responsibility in this but, as the Statement pointed out, Afghanistan still produces 90 per cent of the heroin on our streets.
	I do not ask for the content of the rules of engagement, but we need to be assured that those rules are clear, unambiguous and recognised by those who are to be on the ground as entirely practicable. We also wish to be assured that allied contingents under UK command will be working to the same rules of engagement as our own forces. If that is not the case, as seems all too likely, we need to know what the differences are and some explicit appraisal of the consequent difficulties for our own forces and their commanders. We cannot have a repetition of the Kosovo experience, where NATO's troops' efforts were compromised by incompatible RoE.
	This is yet another commitment while infantry battalions are being cut and recruiting and retention are in freefall. Will the Minister assure the House that the deployment to Afghanistan will not be made at the expense of our commitment to the MND (SE) in Iraq? Can he say something about the progress in the training of the Afghan army and police? This is vital, as they must take over one day.
	Money for development aid and to compensate poppy farmers is essential if reconstruction is not to fail and if our forces are to be accepted in performing their eradication work. Will the Minister confirm that NGOs will be provided with military protection from insurgent attacks during reconstruction?
	I also pay tribute to our Armed Forces. The Government must ensure that those who are sent to Afghanistan will serve there as members of a fully generated and coherent force, equipped from the start to deal with all the difficult challenges that experience suggests may reasonably be expected.

Lord Garden: My Lords, we on these Benches also supported the intervention in Afghanistan after the terrible events of 9/11. We supported the Foreign Secretary's remarks at that time that we had to carry out reconstruction in Afghanistan after the international community had abandoned it at the end of the Cold War. We have been saddened that the focus on Iraq has meant that progress in Afghanistan has been much slower than it should have been. While advances have been made in some respects, we still have lawlessness and a flourishing opium harvest after four years of operations there. We therefore strongly support the principle of the UK contributing both military and civil aid. The military element which the Statement described as peaking at 5,700 is a very substantial force.
	Writing in the Financial Times on Monday, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, NATO's Secretary-General, said:
	"Nato's operation in Afghanistan . . . is the most ambitious mission in Nato's history".
	When he talked about the overlap of the American Operation Enduring Freedom and NATO's one, he said:
	"Nato's mission is different and it is distinct. With this in mind, allies have agreed command arrangements to ensure that the two missions do not get in each other's way".
	We on these Benches have concerns over potential problems from two military organisations with overlapping areas of responsibility, different doctrine and different missions. It is not ideal. The Minister talked about the transition period when British forces will be moving effectively from being part of Operation Enduring Freedom to being under NATO. We would like assurances that that can be managed, given the NATO Secretary-General's problems.
	On the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps headquarters—we are the framework nation, and it will be a task for about 1,000 of our troops—we agree that it is sensible to go to an enlarged headquarters for an enlarged mission. The Statement says that the ARRC headquarters mission is for nine months, from May through to February next year. The problem is, what other headquarters will be available to take over next February? What does the Minister think are the options for an enlarged headquarters other than the ARRC come next February? Should we be planning on a sustained commitment there?
	The second aspect relates to the forces contributing to stage 3 in the south of Afghanistan. Everyone agrees that this is a challenging environment—as challenging as the eastern area of Afghanistan, according to some analysts—and the task is important if we are to stabilise Afghanistan. But it is not going to be quick or easy, as the Defence Secretary said earlier today in the other place.
	NATO has been having prolonged discussions on the force generation to meet this southern, stage 3 task and the questions of who will provide the forces, how big the forces are and how they are configured. The Statement indicates that that process is not yet complete as regards at least the Dutch, Australian, New Zealand and Danish forces. Before the main deployment takes place, we need to ensure that we know what kind of force we are going to have. Indeed, at the Defence Select Committee on 17 January, a MoD official said of the Defence Secretary's position:
	"The final condition was that there was a properly populated NATO plan".
	Surely that means that we need to know which NATO allies are going to provide which forces. Can the Minister tell us when that agreement is likely to come about, given that many of the Parliaments still have to decide? Meanwhile, I think it entirely sensible that preparations for the preliminary deployments referred to in the Statement are carried out.
	I agree totally with the noble Lord, Lord Astor of Hever, on the question of rules of engagement. We need harmonised rules of engagement and a harmonised doctrine for adjacent forces. Given the NATO Secretary-General's remarks, there seems to be a problem over that. Can the Minister explain how it will work in the UK's area of responsibility in the very hostile south?
	The question of the size of the force is a judgment for the Chiefs of Staff. I accept the assurances given on that but I hope that they have got it right by having sufficient reserves of force capability there.
	I am delighted to see that the Statement also focuses on the important roles that the attack and support helicopters will play in this operation. Remembering the Soviet experience in Afghanistan, I recall that helicopter losses were its greatest problem. We need to ensure that we have adequate safeguards for our helicopters. The Statement is not entirely clear whether we are talking about six Chinooks or nine Chinooks. Three are going out with the preliminary force from one of the squadrons, and then there will be another six. Will the force ultimately be nine Chinooks or will it reduce back to six?
	I ask one last question of the Minister. I hear that troops are now being told that deployments will be for eight months—rather than six month, as they were—before roulement happens. Is there a change of policy? If so, does the Minister believe that this will affect retention and the long-term health of the services? If we are going to extend each deployment, will there be a proportionate one-third increase in the space between deployments?
	What we have heard today in the Statement—and I am grateful to the Minister for relaying it—is an important step forward in the future of Afghanistan. But we know that the deployment is going to be long and hard and that it is going to be a great task for our military and civilian components out there. From these Benches we wish them every success.

Lord Drayson: My Lords, I am most grateful for the clear support of noble Lords opposite for the Statement. I am also grateful for the clear and direct questions. We know through our experiences over recent years in Iraq, and before that in Kosovo, that there have been important lessons to learn. It is by such questioning that we can ensure that we have properly thought about all aspects of the contingencies, the deployment and these operations to ensure that we get them absolutely right. I am therefore grateful to the noble Lords and happy to give them, as clearly as I can, the direct answers that they seek. If I miss any I shall write to noble Lords to ensure that they are followed up from the record.
	The noble Lord, Lord Astor, asked whether we were convinced that we had enough troops. The noble Lord, Lord Garden, asked whether we felt we had sufficient reserves. Yes, we do. The plans put in place by the Chiefs of Staff take into account our understanding of the situation and the security environment into which we are going in the southern part of Afghanistan. They are based also on the experience that we have had in the northern regions. This leads us to be confident that this quite significant and complex deployment provides us with the capability we need to do the job properly and safely. Yes, we are confident that that can be done without any requirement to draw down troops from Iraq. We hope that as the situation in Iraq develops in a positive way we will be in a position this year to begin the process of handover. But that is not linked to this decision today.
	I was asked about the rules of engagement but, as noble Lords know, it is not our policy to go into those details. However, particularly given the complexity of the two parallel operations, Operation Enduring Freedom and the ISAF NATO-led operation, we recognise that there is concern about the rules of engagement. I can reassure the House that we have clear and unambiguous rules of engagement which do not contain some of the caveats about which I suspect noble Lords are concerned. However, I should be happy to meet noble Lords separately to fully brief them on the rules of engagement and to address that point.
	The question about the development of the Afghan security forces leads to the point about what is our exit strategy, a matter which I know is of concern. Bluntly, our exit strategy is for us to support the development of the Afghan security forces in Helmand province until they have approximately the same number of security forces as we will be providing to support the reconstruction efforts. That is the criteria for our exit strategy. We have been encouraged by the progress that has been made by the governor, Engineer Dowd, in the region and the direction which he is giving that there really is progress. That is why we feel that it is so important for NATO to provide support in the south.
	I was asked about protection for NGOs in the region, which is a key part of what we are doing. ISAF will be looking to create—and to help the Afghans create—a security environment in which the NGOs can function effectively. I believe that we have put in place the security forces to ensure that that is delivered in the way that I have described.
	The noble Lords were right to ask questions about the detailed aspects of command and control, and we recognise the complexity of the transition. As we move around the country to increase the squeeze on the areas that are most under the control of the warlords, we believe that we have in place good plans, which have been thoroughly discussed between the commanders in Operation Enduring Freedom and the NATO operations, to manage that transition well. But we recognise the challenge and we are working to manage that very carefully indeed.
	The noble Lord asked about the ARCC HQ. We are committed to doing the job for nine months. Our expectation is that, at the end of that nine months, the Spanish will take over. That is the plan. He also asked about helicopters. I know that he has deep experience of having flown a number of aircraft including helicopters and particularly Chinooks. I make it absolutely clear that we will be moving to a position where six Chinook helicopters will be deployed.
	As the House will know, our practice is to have a six-month roulement. My understanding is that that will be maintained.
	I hope that I have answered the noble Lords' questions. If I have missed any or if they wish further information, I should be very happy to provide it in a briefing or in written form. Because of the importance of this issue I should say to the House generally that if any noble Lord wishes to have a personal briefing on these matters, I should be more than happy to arrange it.

Lord King of Bridgwater: My Lords, the tone of voice in which the Minister delivered the Statement will be appreciated by the House, as it is a very sombre Statement indeed. He said that the Taliban continues to be a problem. Is it not correct that the Taliban has reorganised and that there is significant evidence that it is becoming a more serious problem again, which our forces will have to face? There is no point in ducking that issue, which I am sure the Minister would not want to do.
	I have two specific questions. The Minister referred optimistically to the future decisions of the Dutch and the Danes to accompany us, and also to Australia and New Zealand. If by any chance they do not, what effect will that have on his Statement? He said that he had provided enough forces, and that Ministers are satisfied that this will be an adequate force to meet the requirements; but does that not also depend on adequate forces coming from other countries as well? Is the Statement in that sense conditional?
	The Minister referred to the cost of the deployment as being £1 billion over five years. Is the House therefore to understand that this is an open-ended commitment, possibly lasting as long as five years? He referred to a time limit on the ARRC headquarters, terminating in the middle of next year, but he referred in no sense to any time limit on this deployment. Could he help the House in that regard?

Lord Drayson: My Lords, the way in which the noble Lord, with his deep experience of these matters, described the concern and the interest in this subject is absolutely right. We do not underestimate what we are undertaking. I assure the House that the level of thought on the preparation for this operation, and the interaction between government departments, especially those responsible for providing the reconstruction support in DfID and the Foreign Office, has been unprecedented. Also, we are learning from our experience in recent years in Iraq and previous to that in operations in the Balkans.
	As the noble Lord rightly said, aspects relating to the activities of the Taliban give us concern. We have been concerned to see the increase in suicide attacks, for example. None the less, we feel that the tactics and the force posture that we will be taking—and we have a very good understanding of the security situation that we will face in Helmand—give us the confidence that we have the tools and the configuration to do the job properly. Of course, as the noble Lord knows well with regard to the professionalism and experience of our Armed Forces, the way in which we go about our deployment will take into account what we are learning about the tactics that we come up against. We have full capability to respond, and the reserve capability should it be required.
	Let me be absolutely clear on the NATO deployment of our coalition partners in this matter. The Secretary of State in the past 24 hours has had a number of conversations with the heads of other NATO states relating to that matter. We are confident that NATO will provide the forces necessary in those regions—for example, in Oruzgan in the north—which will be required to enable us to do our job properly. There is no question of Britain plugging any gap. We shall go forward only on the basis that these forces are provided by NATO to meet the commander's requirements to carry out this operation clearly. We feel confident, based on the conversations that have taken place, that NATO will provide those forces. We must recognise that Canada has already said yes and is already there, and that the Dutch Cabinet has voted unanimously to support this. So we believe that our confidence is well place. But I restate the fact that we shall not be plugging any gap.

Lord Soley: My Lords, the Minister has described a very welcome and extensive international co-operation, but could he tell us a little more about our efforts to involve some of the Islamic nations? I understand the problem for Pakistan, particularly—but Malaysia, Egypt, Jordan and Morocco, all of which support our aims and objectives in Afghanistan and all of which have experience of peace-keeping operations, should make some contribution. That would give an even wider degree of support for the international effort. Could the Minister tell us a little more about our efforts to get them involved?

Lord Drayson: My Lords, we have an opportunity next week, at the international conference that is taking place on Afghanistan, to encourage other nations to support us, as my noble friend described. There is a tremendous opportunity to support the development of Afghanistan, not least in terms of military capability, but also in terms of financial and other aid support. But I remind the House that this is a NATO operation, under the auspices of NATO.
	To go back to the question that the noble Lord, Lord King, asked about costs and time, the ARRC headquarters is on a nine-month deployment, and the Helmand task force is on a three-year deployment. The timing of five years takes into account the cost of the build-up and the bring-back; in that five-year time period, £1 billion is the total cost.

Lord Williamson of Horton: My Lords, this is indeed a substantial package and effort, with 5,000 troops at maximum and helicopters. I have complete confidence in the judgment of our professional advisers on what we need—and I thank the Minister for explaining that. But could he say some more about the "enemy", as the British public are interested in what we are facing? I know that he cannot go into detail, but are we facing relatively big and organised bands of military force, controlled by warlords, or are we facing a very diverse and mixed group of different gangs and types of military, but not very high-grade, operation? People have very little idea of what we are facing and why we need the troops, and for public confidence it is important that we should try to explain the situation as best we can.

Lord Drayson: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving me the opportunity briefly to describe the situation. There are three main groups. The history of Afghanistan is one of a complexity of tribes, which have battled both among each other and with other nations, such as ourselves in the 1870s, with imperialist ambitions. There are tribal groups of differing religious bases and sizes. There is also the emergence of religious-linked terrorist organisations. We have talked about the Taliban. But there is also a third group, the organised crime that supports the process by which the opiates are converted into heroin on the streets of the United Kingdom. We should not underestimate the complexity of the threat that we face from those three groups.

Lord Chidgey: My Lords, the Minister has made another reference to the Government's concern about the production of heroin in Afghanistan. This House will be aware that for some years, it has been the Government's policy to eradicate opium production in Afghanistan, which is of course a laudable concept, and to provide an alternative income stream to the Afghan farmers. That is a very laudable policy in principle, but sadly it seems to have been rather a substantial failure in practice. What do the Government now propose to do that is so markedly different from past efforts, which will result in some semblance of progress in the eradication of opium production in Afghanistan to relieve the suffering on the streets of our cities?

Lord Drayson: My Lords, I cannot agree with how the noble Lord characterised the progress in what we are doing in Afghanistan. If you look at the facts relating to the progress there, politically and in terms of the activities of security forces, and the economic growth that is taking place, you can see that we are making progress. I accept that it is not as far or as fast as we should like it to be, but Her Majesty's Government are spending a quarter of a billion pounds on supporting the national counter-narcotics activities in the next three years. We have learnt a lot about what works and does not work, and about the effect on the social structure of the country and the way in which you go about suppressing opium production. We have to increase the risks for the people who engage in opium production. The way you do that is establishing the rule of law, a sensible justice system and the power of the government. That is what we intend to do. We also need to support the farmers and give them an alternative livelihood. DfID and the FCO, working with the NGOs, are developing techniques which are working.
	This operation is about providing the military support for the reconstruction teams to go into the southern Helmand province, where a significant proportion of the poppies are grown. Tackling this will take time and concerted effort.

Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville: My Lords, paragraph 21 of the draft Statement available from the Printed Paper Office had three final sentences:
	"The ISAF mission is unchanged. It is focused on reconstruction. It does not include a role in counter-terrorism".
	The Minister did not read out that final sentence when he read the Statement. What underlay its original inclusion, and what underlies its subsequent exclusion?

Lord Drayson: My Lords, the House will appreciate that the Statement I read was based on the Statement which my right honourable friend the Defence Secretary actually made 20 minutes beforehand in the other place. When I stood up, the debate on it was still taking place. What I said in paragraph 21, in reading out the Statement to the House, was what my right honourable friend said. There is no meaning to be read into that being included or not. I can look into this and give a full answer to the noble Lord, but I can reassure him that the Statement, which was in the written Statement provided to the House earlier, had just been passed to me. It does, as he quite rightly says, state,
	"It does not include a role in counter-terrorism".
	That is a fact; it does not include that role. The ISAF force which we are deploying is not going to be engaged in counter-terrorism. Operation Enduring Freedom, which is being undertaken, has that role. It is not our role. Our role is in reconstruction. I hope that has been helpful to the noble Lord.

The Earl of Sandwich: My Lords, I welcome the continuing commitment to Afghanistan and especially the focus on reconstruction. The noble Lord will perhaps remember that there was some confusion as to the role of soldiers in reconstruction and humanitarian work. Is he satisfied that the aid agencies have been fully consulted, and will they again be consulted at the conference next week, about the contribution of soldiers to aid projects? He spoke of a secure environment. Does that mean that it is entirely a support role, and that they will not become operationally involved in aid work?

Lord Drayson: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Earl. Yes, the NGOs have been fully consulted in this process. That consultation is an ongoing process which will continue, not only during the conference next week but also as we deploy on operations together. The noble Earl is right to emphasise the important role that the Armed Forces play in reconstruction, either by, for example, our engineers working on reconstruction projects, or in the nature of the work that they do in helping to establish an environment whereby the rule of law and security can exist, and reconstruction can take place.
	The purpose of this operation, and the quite formidable force structure which we have put in place, is to ensure that we are able to provide the security for the reconstruction teams to carry out their work. That is its prime purpose.

G8: Development Aid

Baroness Jay of Paddington: rose to call attention to the commitments made by the G8 on development aid and the case for fulfilling these commitments in 2006; and to move for Papers.
	My Lords, I am grateful for this early opportunity in the new year to take stock of what was achieved in aid and development last year, and to discuss how we best build on that progress in the next 12 months. I declare my interest as an honorary chair of the council of the Overseas Development Institute.
	In fact, 2005 was a momentous year. "Make poverty history" became a rallying cry not just for committed charities and NGOs but also for national governments and international institutions. The UK Government can rightly be proud of their political leadership in steering global policy through our presidency of the G8 and the European Union. Major commitments were made, notably on increasing aid budgets and decreasing debt. The most prominent undertakings, as your Lordships will remember, were made at the Gleneagles summit of the G8 countries last July. There it was agreed that official development assistance in Africa would rise to $25 billion a year by 2010, more than doubling aid to Africa compared to 2004. In addition, the European Union members had already agreed last May to increase their overall aid to 0.56 per cent of their GNP by 2010. Here, in their general election manifesto, the UK Government pledged to reach the iconic 0.7 per cent of financial funds to these countries by 2013. Overall, the global amount of aid will double by 2010.
	The Gleneagles meeting also agreed to cancel 100 per cent of the outstanding debt of the eligible 18 HIPC—highly indebted poor countries. This deal has subsequently been ratified and given teeth both by the membership of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. I am glad to say that Britain is now urging similar relief for all 67 of the poorest countries.
	On trade, the third important part of the development agenda, the year ended less rosily, as the Doha round talks in Hong Kong made what can be described as only modest progress. There was some movement on export subsidies, and the talks did not break down completely as some pessimists had predicted. But in 2006 we need to see a strongly renewed effort to sort out this vital driver of development. After all, the potential results of a fair trade system eclipse the benefits of both aid and debt relief. Trade can be the single most potent tool in the fight against poverty. I know my noble friend Lord Sewel, and perhaps from his reaction my noble friend Lord Foulkes, will be developing this argument later in the debate. On a practical note, I understand that there are proposals now to reconvene the WTO Doha talks at Head of Government level, and to try to make further progress. Can the Minister tell the House whether this is a real possibility in the short term, or simply a Westminster rumour?
	Overall, there have been 12 months of solid, successful work, led vigorously from the front by my right honourable friends the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the International Development Secretary. As Hilary Benn says in his latest DfID consultation document:
	"Did we make poverty history in 2005? No. Did we take a big step in the right direction? Yes".
	Perhaps the most significant long-term achievement has been to create a widespread international consensus on the importance of international development. In this, of course, the Government have been greatly helped by the enthusiasm of civil society all over the world. There is no question that one of the most energising forces behind the G8 decisions at Gleneagles were the Live8 concerts and all that they represented. Yet, as the Chancellor of the Exchequer said a couple of weeks ago, we must make sure that 2005 is seen as the start of something, and not the end.
	What should we be doing in 2006, and how can we ensure that the commitments that were made last year are translated into action and, most importantly, into real change in the developing countries? We are constantly reminded that, on the ground, little has changed so far. I have just received a letter from Glenys Kinnock MEP, who described in horrifying terms the continued atrocities in Darfur. She noted that although Darfur might have come away from the media headlines, life in the villages was as intolerable as ever. She wrote:
	"Everyday women face the prospect of being raped and beaten when they leave their homes simply to find food or firewood".
	Today we have heard from the International Development Committee in another place that it is calling for renewed action, both on the economic and military front, from the EU and from the UN, to try to alleviate this tragedy. I would certainly support such moves.
	In addition, there should be great pressure on the EU countries to fulfil the obligations they made last May, and again through the G8 in July, on aid in general. I have already heard it said publicly that Italy and Germany will take a very long time to meet their obligations. One sceptical, but none the less informed, observer has insisted to me recently that it will be 300 years before Germany reaches the agreed EU target on assistance. Can the Minister be more optimistic about the European donors, and give us some facts about how the aid is flowing?
	In the UK we have recently had a difficult problem with our own expanding bilateral aid programme. Last week the Secretary of State confirmed that we are suspending budget support for Ethiopia, one of the neediest countries in the world. Until now we have been providing about £90 million a year. This apparently tough decision has been taken in response to the human rights abuse by the Ethiopian Government, and raises all the difficult questions about how to provide assistance to very poor people when their own official channels are both corrupt and abusive. In other words, how do we prevent more aid making the situation worse in so-called "fragile states"?
	Part of the solution in the short term may be to be more flexible and imaginative about how aid flows, and perhaps to concentrate more on working through NGOs such as Oxfam and Save the Children. Again, I believe that my noble friend Lord Hunt of Chesterton may speak further about that in his contribution later in the debate. But as the Overseas Development Institute commented last week in response to the Government's position, regular transfers of resources through budget support allow governments to build up core services, such as health, education, water supplies and road maintenance, and to pay for all the associated costs, including salaries. NGOs may be able to step in successfully to provide interim support, but are not well placed in the long term to run schools and health clinics on behalf of the government. As a result of the UK's recent decision, Ethiopia is likely to suffer from an outright reduction in social service provision, and there may in addition be macro-economic costs as the Ethiopian Government are forced to raise domestic borrowing to meet their own short-term commitments.
	Situations such as that in Ethiopia face the Government with some tough decisions, and there are very few choices in front of us. As we know, respect for human rights and democratic accountability are, in the long run, fundamental principles without which any sustainable development is unlikely to be achieved. But the case of Ethiopia is another example of how, in 2006, we need to look harder at the different options for delivering the expanded aid flows we have agreed to, and at the methods of monitoring and evaluation, not just for the aid budgets themselves, but for the institutions that are receiving and delivering them on the ground. This will probably require deeper and rather more complex analysis of social, cultural and political development in recipient countries, and can only be undertaken in partnership with those countries.
	It was interesting that, at the Gleneagles meeting, the eight heads of government underlined the importance of the Africa Partnership Forum, created in 2003, as a key mechanism for monitoring progress. They agreed that the partnership forum should meet twice-yearly, and it met in London last October. Progress by African partners, as well as the G8, should be regularly reviewed under a joint action plan. Will the Minister update us on how that process will be taken forward this year? What benchmarks will be agreed to measure change? What explicit criteria can be adopted for policy decisions, such as that just taken by our own Government with regard to Ethiopia?
	Most importantly, perhaps, can the Africa Partnership Forum be the driver for discussion and then action to improve absorptive capacity in developing countries, particularly in supporting effective and accountable institutions: in other words, acting through the forum to give equal responsibility and above all equal ownership to the African partner countries, to ensure the high aspirations of Gleneagles are properly fulfilled?
	Gordon Brown has already called on the developing countries to produce a delivery plan for the millennium development goals, and intends to table the idea formally as part of a package of proposals at the meeting of the G8 finance ministers in Moscow next month. The Chancellor is calling for a new agenda of what he called "empowerment for development" during Russia's presidency of the G8 this year. As parliamentarians, we too should play a role in making sure that development does not slip off the agenda—this debate today is an example of that—and that it does not simply become last year's topic, whether for governments, the media or, most importantly, campaigners worldwide.
	The other place took a significant step in that regard on 20 January when it gave an unopposed Second Reading to my honourable friend Tom Clarke's Bill on international development reporting and transparency. At the heart of that Bill is a proposed detailed report to Parliament on international development that can be both scrutinised and debated in both Houses. As Mr Clarke said in introducing his Bill,
	"It would also sharpen the responsibility of all Members to track the progress that is being made towards the millennium development goals and to push for action when that progress is not sufficient".—[Official Report, Commons, 20/1/06; col. 1080.]
	I am delighted that the Government have warmly welcomed this Private Member's Bill, and for the enthusiastic support it received on all sides of the Commons. I look forward to it arriving in your Lordships' House.
	In conclusion, I think I can say without complacency that development is one major policy area where the aims of Government, professionals, pressure groups and the many general campaigners, as well as those with a political interest, are similar: they are very much in line. I was interested to see that DfID's latest consultation document, Eliminating World Poverty, raised the same kind of questions about the future that I have raised today, although from a government perspective. I look forward to today's debate. I hope it will form part of that consultation process and be of interest to the Government in taking their own aims forward.
	Consultation and monitoring have their place, but beyond that we must ensure that there is continued and effective global action to make the millennium development goals a reality, not just in policy terms, but for those millions of people who, at the beginning of 2006, still exist in devastating and abject poverty.
	My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.

Lord Roberts of Llandudno: My Lords, I appreciate the opportunity to take part in this debate, and am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Jay of Paddington, for putting it on the agenda today.
	When I was a boy I would go to the circus. I saw a juggler there. One of the tricks that was really appreciated was that he had sticks, and he spun plates on them. There were 10 plates spinning, and his job was to keep each of them spinning. He was running from one to the other, so that nothing toppled and nothing wobbled. When we look at the crises in the world, it seems we are always trying to keep those plates spinning. As soon as one crisis seems to be easing, there is another crisis to take its place.
	At the moment, so many of the organisations involved in development and relief are concentrating on Nigeria, and for my few minutes I would also like to think of the crisis in Nigeria. One-fifth of all African people live there, which gives it a population of 130 million. Two-thirds of those people exist on less than $1 a day, and one child in five will die before his or her fifth birthday. This is a situation that I know makes us all weep. Some will say that the oil revenue that has been part of the growth in Nigeria could well tackle that problem, but the income from oil is equivalent to 50 cents a day for each Nigerian. The noble Baroness spoke of heavily indebted countries deserving debt cancellation. That is less than the income in Cameroon. So I am making a special plea today for the people of Nigeria.
	Nigeria's original loans totalled less than £17 billion, but, with interest and penalties, that figure soared: it more than doubled. We are all immensely grateful that the G8's solution was a cancellation in the region of £12 billion, but that still leaves more than £7.4 billion to be repaid immediately. These payments are to be made this January and this March.
	Professor Jeffrey Sachs, who noble Lords may know is the director of the UN's Millennium Project, is convinced that if this money could be spent in Nigeria, it would be of immeasurable assistance to child welfare, immunisation and healthcare. DfID figures state that the United Kingdom's share of this money is £1.7 billion. If this was used in the healthcare and immunisation projects that I have mentioned, 4.2 million lives could be saved. The repayment that the Nigerian Government are required to make is twice as much as DfID gave to the whole of Africa in 2005. Now that Nigeria has a democratic government, under the new president, who are committed to reducing poverty, can we let this life-saving opportunity pass?
	Many of the original loans to Nigeria belonged to a very different era and a very different style of Nigerian government. It is said that much of the money was spent on useless projects. The director general of Nigeria's Debt Management Office claims that most of the projects were fraudulent. In a recent study of 63 projects funded by foreign loans, he found that 75 per cent of the funding was for useless projects. It is a case of the sins of the fathers penalising the children.
	I know that the Government's heart is in the right place. Is there no way at all in which the United Kingdom could bring new hope to Nigeria by cancelling this remaining debt as well? Will they ask the Paris Club to share in the venture with us?
	I shall briefly quote some figures. In the United Kingdom, the infant mortality rate is five in every 1,000. That is a sad five. But in Nigeria, it is 100 in every 1,000. We have the ability to save those lives. Life expectancy in the UK is around 78; in Nigeria, it is 47. By cancelling this debt entirely, we can add years to the lifespan of these people. In the United Kingdom, we have 166 doctors for every 100,000 people; in Nigeria, it is only 27. In the United Kingdom, our per capita income is around $30,000; in Nigeria, it is $390. Surely we can channel our compassion into an effective response to the needs of these people. The opportunity exists to reinvest in Nigeria and return to it the outstanding £1.7 billion. This would contribute to a huge change for the better in that country.
	Already, other voices are joining us in that plea. We know that 20 Members of the United States Congress have said only this month:
	"We think it is inappropriate to accept this payment from Nigeria given the social crisis that country is facing".
	We can add our voices today to the voice of those United States Congress men and women. By doing that, we will taking a massive step towards saving all those lives and helping all those people in that part of that problematic continent.

The Lord Bishop of Manchester: My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness on securing this debate on a matter that, as she knows, is of great and active concern to Christian Churches and other faiths in this country. A few weeks ago, Christian and Muslim leaders, together with the British Humanist Association, publicly stated that the cancellation of debt for the world's poorest countries is an act not of charity but of justice, central to all our beliefs. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has made the same point.
	The statement went on to urge what the noble Lord, Lord Roberts, has just spoken so eloquently about: the need to return the huge payment required of Nigeria, including that £1.7 billion owed to the United Kingdom. But we on these Benches welcome the commitment made by this Government no longer to make their bilateral aid conditional on recipient countries adopting specific economic policy prescriptions. The challenge though is to ensure that that commitment is implemented. Will the Minister confirm how many of the 67 countries which have been named are now benefiting? The noble Baroness, Lady Jay, referred to that.
	The wider commitments made by the G8 on development are undoubtedly weakened by the failure to take the giant leap that is internationally needed to end the debt crisis that we all know shackles so many poor countries and deepens poverty, although it is heartening that the IMF has ratified cancellation for 17 out of 18 countries.
	We on these Benches do not underestimate the personal influence of Gordon Brown and the lead that he has taken to make poverty history. But the momentum needs to be increased throughout 2006 because, as we all know, there have been setbacks on the way. The Hong Kong deal last month was disappointing. I hope that further anti-developmental outcomes such as inappropriate liberalisation for poor countries can be prevented as we approach the key deadline in April for the agreement about the WTO's negotiating role on agriculture and industrial goods.
	The Government need to work hard to prove that their statement of commitment to trade justice is genuine and to deliver, but we applaud—I say it again—the leadership that this Government have given within the G8 in achieving global agreement, such as to universal access to AIDS treatment, prevention and care for everyone by 2010. That would be a massive breakthrough if it really happened.
	It will of course require continuing pressure on the G8 to keep to its commitment to replenish the Global Fund and generate increased resources. It will also require rapid expansion in developing countries of the production and distribution of generic medicines, and the strengthening of health systems that are essential if the G8 commitment to universal access is to be achieved in the time set. That, of course, also relates to debt cancellation and the consequent ability for developing countries to divert their resources.
	All that must be seen in the wider context of development aid, with the Government not stepping back from their commitment to reach 0.7 per cent of gross national income spent on aid by 2013. I think that all parties are agreed on that; indeed, I think that the Liberal Democrats would like to push the target two years earlier. Nor must the Government do anything other than press, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jay said, European governments, especially those of Germany and Italy, to keep to their G8 commitments. I hope that the Minister will be able to assure us that that will not take 300 years.
	The Government must also work for increased coherence in their policy on the delivery of aid. The DTI must take a more pro-poor stance on trade and the Foreign Office must consider its policy on arms. I thought that it was a shame that there was nothing in the text of the G8 agreement about this Government's commitment to work for an arms treaty. The Government will, I know, not want to forget the role that the Churches and NGOs have, not least in matters of common concern, such as increasing the number of teachers, doctors and health workers in developing countries to help to meet the millennium development goals.
	The worry about all this is the record to date of many western initiatives. Too often, the end result is far behind the commitments made and the rhetoric used. For example, it is a scandal—to use the Prime Minister's words, "a scar"—that 50 years after the independence era began Africa's prospects now seem worse than ever. Its average per capita national income is one-third lower than that of the world's next-poorest region, south Asia. Its entire economic output is a mere 1.3 per cent of world GDP; its school enrolment is falling; its life expectancy is declining; and its attractiveness to global corporations is almost nil. As President Mbeki has said, the prospect of Africa escaping precipitous decline depends heavily on western assistance.
	I dwell on Africa because it is a continent that I have visited often. I have many times witnessed in towns and remote villages the results of the obscene gap between this world's rich and poor. The noble Baroness, Lady Jay, spoke of Sudan, and I made similar points in the recent debate in this House on the tragic situation there. In a debate that engages us with the G8 commitments, I feel bound to say that commitment at its best is a two-way process. Gordon Brown has asked what the developing world, rightly empowered, can do for itself. He properly urged developing countries to produce their own poverty-reduction and development plans.
	I have recently been reading Martin Meredith's well informed book, The State of Africa, in which he observes that at the core of the crisis on that continent is the failure to provide effective government, apart from, of course, Mandela and, I suppose, Seretse Khama in Botswana. I quote from the book:
	"Mostly, Africa has suffered terribly from Big Men and elites whose pre-occupation has been holding power and self-enrichment. That has spawned a culture of corruption at every level".
	An African Union report has estimated that corruption costs Africa more than $150 billion a year, which is over 25 per cent of the whole continent's GNP. Your Lordships may be familiar with the highly publicised speech given in Nairobi 18 months ago at a business leaders' conference by the British high commissioner, Edward Clay, who graphically questioned the honesty of Ministers and senior officials.
	I say all this because the partnership between the African Partnership Forum, which the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, mentioned, and G8 is hugely important, not least as being an observable and potentially very effective counter to this great worry, which has basis, about honesty and corruption. It is essential that this Government should do everything that they can, not only to fulfil G8 commitments on development aid in 2006, but to face up to the challenge of the enormously difficult task of addressing those issues of governance and corruption in Africa and elsewhere that so speedily undermine the very issues of aid that we on these Benches, and I am sure noble Lords across this House, so deeply desire to see dealt with and so fervently support.

Lord Hunt of Chesterton: My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, on securing this important debate. We should also congratulate the Government, the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State on their support for developing countries. It is important that they took the unusual step of trying to connect issues—that is always dangerous for politicians but they did so—to the global campaigns for mitigating climate change and for improving the environment, which have particularly major effects in developing countries. They also gave some teeth to that approach through their support for the appointment of a chief scientist to the Department for International Development—Professor Gordon Conway. I understand that he is slowly working through the system to ensure that everyone at DfID recognises that science and the environment are important tools in the department's poverty programme.
	I declare an interest as president of ACOPS—an NGO that deals with sustainable development. I am a professor at University College, London and a member of the Advisory Council on Natural Disaster Reduction. In November, we held a conference in Ghana on coastal zones in sub-Saharan Africa. Those are the areas where many of the people in Africa live, and we have already heard about Nigeria. We organised the conference through a UK NGO and the Government of Ghana. I am afraid that we did not get support from Her Majesty's Government, but we shall tell them the important results of the conference. However, there was interesting support from the UK in the form of the Arts Council, which sent experts in various aspects of the arts in recognition of the fact that the response of societies to climate and the environment is as challenging at a cultural level as it is at an economic or technical level. That aspect will be increasingly important. It was interesting for us to see how the issues of climate and water are seen in a dramatic way in Africa.
	At the meeting, we learnt how there is a steady reduction in rainfall and a rise in temperature in the coastal zones of West Africa—a source of great concern. It is also of concern at a policy level that those data are not widely disseminated. That is largely a question of inadequate funding. In fact, these important data were unknown to experts from the African Centre for Meteorological Applications to Development, in Niamey, Niger, and are unknown to experts around the world. So clearly there is a great need to make use of information that is already being obtained in Africa.
	A related point is that the African centre in Niamey, which provides important advice to governments in West Africa about drought and other extreme weather events, does not have the funds to make use of the relevant research and data being published in scientific journals and reports in the developed world—in Europe, Japan and the United States. Surely, as parliamentarians, we should be concerned that the significant funds being applied in the UK and the EU to investment in tropical research are not reaching the countries affected. As part of their Africa year, DfID and Defra organised a conference and produced a tremendous report, which was completely unknown among all the scientists whom I met in Africa. Therefore, the information issue is very important. I am glad to say that my previous organisation, the UK Met Office, provides some support through the Ministry of Defence but not enough to cover even such basic requirements.
	However, one should applaud the fact that DfID, through the expanded governmental programme, has contributed substantial funds for the relief of hunger and other humanitarian problems associated with the drought that we saw last year in Niger. But surely it would be worth while sending a few thousand pounds to the experts in Niger so that they can find out all the information that they need to advise their governments beforehand.
	Advice given to governments in Africa by their own experts needs considerable support and help. Evidence shows that if funds are provided to governments centrally under the DfID programme through budgetary support, very little of the money finds its way to those providing vital services for information and technical assistance. Surely some new ways are needed to fund specific programmes. One might be to use non-governmental organisations and specialist UN agencies. Here, the Royal Society, for example, is developing links with scientific organisations in Africa, but it needs funds to do that.
	Noble Lords may recall the remarks of the Prime Minister, who sometimes seems to think that science is simple. He suggested that the environment does not need rocket science. Actually, it needs much more complex science than rockets, which just go up and down and are rather easy. Very complex scientific questions need to be answered if integrated and more cost-effective solutions are to be found. Accra is typical of large African cities where health is affected almost as much by bad air pollution as by malaria—a point referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Roberts. In Nigeria, that combination is devastating for young children and also for the elderly.
	Plans for slum neighbourhoods are highly controversial, as Ghanaian experts and the Minister explained how health, the environment, commerce and transport all have to be considered together. Juggling acts are performed—to take up the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Roberts. In the UK we have well-known jugglers—people in town planning departments. Accra has only three planning experts in the city; the figure is 600 in Amsterdam. The Ghanaian Government appealed to the UK and other countries to second our experts. Perhaps retired experts would welcome the opportunity to help. Again DfID needs some flexible means for funding such secondments.
	My second point relates to the response to natural disasters. UK citizens and the Government generously responded to the great humanitarian need following the tsunami and earthquake events in Asia. But we debated in this House how the Government of Sri Lanka regrettably had not been very effective in using the available funds. Sri Lankan friends of mine had to arrange their own containers and transport to ensure that aid really reached the affected villages. Recently the US press reported on the vital railway link between Columbo and Galle on the southern coast, which was extremely badly hit by tsunami. The railway was destroyed by a huge tidal wave, and the railway workers, who are much maligned by the Sri Lankan press as being communists, were at first actively discouraged by the Sri Lankan Government from doing anything. The Government said, "Don't do anything. There will be money coming from the aid programme, and then we will have lots of it to do the work. Don't start it or that will upset everything". Nothing happened, so the workers got up early in the morning, involved all the villagers, and the railway was back running without any aid arriving.
	Surely if that is the effect of an aid programme, something must be done. We need to have systems that can be applied much faster and which are more closely related to local efforts. Once again, that may require aid agencies and DfID to work more closely with international NGOs, and perhaps give money only when something is really happening on the ground. I have seen programmes in Russia similarly delayed and delayed because aid might be coming. We should surely operate in a different mode.
	As the right reverend Prelate said, the effects of government aid on bureaucracies and politicians can be almost debilitating, even though the aims are humanitarian and idealistic. Are we looking at ways of avoiding that danger? Unless we do so, there may be growing doubts throughout the aid-giving world about our programmes, which is an important issue.

Baroness D'Souza: My Lords, I, too, begin by thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, for providing this opportunity to debate a clearly vital issue.
	The issue is simple. There are many very rich countries in the world, and there are even more very poor ones. In between there are any number of bilateral, multilateral, and private agencies all devoted to ensuring that some of the surplus wealth reaches the under-resourced, so why is there still such grinding and unacceptable poverty? The answers are almost as many as there are agencies, but one is the belief that what can be called collective humanitarian or utopian action to alleviate poverty and introduce democratic systems actually works.
	Last year's G8 summit was surrounded by celebrity events and promises, and publicly expressed outrage, which of course pushed the problem of poverty up the agenda for a little while. Many of your Lordships will remember the brave claims of the 1980s that no child would go to bed hungry by the year 2000. Let me briefly run through a few staggering statistics on the transfer of money from the north to the south. The sum of $250 billion is committed each year. In the past 40 or so years it is estimated that something like $570 billion in foreign aid has been given to Africa alone, and yet most of Africa remains trapped in economic stagnation. It is further estimated by the Chancellor of the Exchequer that it would cost 12 cents per child to prevent half of all child deaths from malaria; and an extra $3 for each new mother to prevent 5 million child deaths over the next 10 years. But the likelihood of children getting appropriate preventive medicine seems as remote as ever.
	Aid is a multi-million pound business and should therefore be subject to the same kind of detailed accountability to its shareholders—that is taxpayers who provide the UN and other multilateral agencies and private charitable foundations with income—as that demanded of commercial companies. With other multi-million pound enterprises, there are economic forecasts, constant monitoring, shareholder meetings, interim reports, dividends and regular critical media comment on performance. If a given product does not meet the needs of customers, it does not sell and the company must immediately revise product and marketing plans if it is to survive. This does not happen when we are trying to deliver assistance to the poorest of the poor.
	I am not suggesting that monitoring and evaluation do not take place; the conditional aid loans of the IMF and the World Bank were and are notorious for their onerous policy and outcome targets, often running into hundreds. We know that the Department for International Development has focused a great deal on proper evaluation and is probably a world leader in this field. But who actually is accountable when things go wrong or targets remain unmet? This brings me back to the issue of "collective Utopia", a phrase coined by the American economist William Easterly.
	Significant aid comes in million dollar packages usually carried out by the big agencies working with partners to achieve the laudable but ill-defined millennium goals: dramatic reductions in child mortality, poverty, illiteracy, environmental degradation and so on. Weighty reports on these goals and their urgency have been produced at great cost by the IMF, the World Bank, the UN and many more, including the UK Government. The poor, who have neither the income nor the political weight, do not stand a chance in shaping, let alone insisting upon, the kind of assistance they most need and can most easily integrate. Huge programmes to transform social, political and economic conditions may not remotely touch the fragmented villages of southern Sudan or Mauritania and, far more importantly, there is no one body to whom we can point a finger when poverty grows into destitution and no one who will assume responsibility. The matter of giving to the poor has become too complex and involves too much money, too many partners, too many expectations which all appear to lead to a degree of failure. We should at least acknowledge that raising and/or spending more money is not in itself an accomplishment.
	Yet aid can and does work in small, focused, well-planned indigenous programmes in which the recipients are stakeholders. The economic miracles that have occurred in many rural villages in India, for example, are probably not even indirectly due to multi-million dollar aid packages. How are these small-scale interventions to be achieved or to be repeated rather more often than they are? Here I am indebted to the work of the newly formed Evidence for Development organisation of which I have become a patron. Very simply, proper surveys need to be undertaken to establish who are the very poor, where they are and what would make them less poor in the short and longer term. Those appear to be very simple questions that are easily answered, but they are not. How is aid best delivered; what kind of participation is required and of whom; and, above all, how might one set not only realistic goals but also measurable ones for different phases of each project? If the assistance is more geared to the building of civil society institutions, what already exists to allow people to collaborate; and how could that be extended and by what means?
	The message is fairly obvious. We do not take the giving of aid sufficiently seriously to understand how the poorest of the poor actually benefit. We must therefore go back to the rather untidy, difficult and time-consuming business of field research and we must get used to listening to those whom we most want to help. If flawed and/or ignorant decisions are made which, far from benefiting the poor, actually cause harm, then someone or some body must be made publicly accountable. The Bill introduced by Tom Clarke in the other place, to which reference has already been made by the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, will go some way to achieve that. I have no doubt that these seemingly harsh measures will focus political will and will hasten the acheivement of the millennium development goals.

Baroness Whitaker: My Lords, as my noble friend Lady Jay said in her penetrating and comprehensive speech, the UK development programme has had an extraordinarily successful year, but more remains to be done to keep the Gleneagles commitments on track. I should like to go back to the underlying purpose of all this development aid—to enable states to take charge of their own development, just as we do, with loans and credit perhaps, but at the behest and with the tax revenue of our own citizens.
	The Department for International Development does foster this approach, with extensive work on capacity-building of all kinds; and there are results. Investment is increasing broadly throughout the developing world—although that is not only due to DfID—even in Africa. There it is at last becoming really African. UNIDO found that the most frequent investors, leaving aside petroleum and mining, in the 10 African countries it surveyed were themselves African, and that in Tanzania more than 60 per cent of investors are African. Real GDP growth in Africa is expected to average 5 per cent by the end of this year.
	But that average would be much better if it were not dragged down by countries whose economies are sabotaged by war, tyranny and corruption; the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester spoke eloquently about the last. As for war, here DfID's aid programme needs to call on joined-up government. The first call is surely to reduce conflict. No development can take place—indeed it will run backward—when the state has disappeared under the impact of the uncontrollable conduct of armed militias and its citizens are without homes, services or even safety. My right honourable friend Jack Straw is on record as pressing for an international arms trade treaty. This is supported by our Defence Manufacturers Association and key trades unionists. It has the support of 43 other countries, including all the EU member states. There is an urgent need for international common standards for arms transfers to conflict-affected regions in Africa and elsewhere, and for common extra-territorial controls over arms brokers, traffickers and transport agents. I ask my noble friend, how can the Government accelerate the progress of this treaty?
	Tyranny is a strange economic phenomenon. There are countries which seem to be pulling themselves out of poverty according to their growth rate—but if we look at the median, rather than the per capita income, we see a different story. And if we look at education and health, particularly of women and children, and the other human development indices, we see countries with close to as much misery as much poorer ones—and some with even more potential for instability and conflict.
	The World Bank's World Development Report 2006 gives a very high place to equality of opportunity in its analysis of successful development. It cites market failures in supply of credit, land, education and, I would add, health; it adds that political inequality means that these deprivations are perpetuated over generations; and, I would add again, regional and ethnic inequality aggravate the tension caused by political inequality, and all these foment instability and conflict.
	Democracy is our answer to political inequality. It is not a term beloved by all developing countries and I am attracted by Amartya Sen's description of democracy as "public reasoning" in his latest book, The Argumentative Indian, or, less succinctly, as,
	"the opportunity of participatory reasoning and public decision-making".
	Those practices can be valued even by people who say democracy is a western concept of only relative value. How does a western aid department foster them?
	Well, first, it should recognise their existence. DflD's support for the African Union, whose female officers protect some of the women of Darfur, is a good example. Perhaps more could be made of AU milestones. The ratification of the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights in 2004 went pretty much unnoticed in the British media. The protocol on women's rights, achieved last year, is worth some western celebration, not least in view of our often-expressed abhorrence of female genital mutilation, which it outlaws. Although the abolition of such a widespread practice must be difficult, we should recognise that here are African women publicly deciding to do away with a hideous inequality themselves. I hope the DfID office in Nairobi expressed support.
	Another stimulus to effective democracy is placing very great weight on internationally agreed human rights. Rights are intrinsically claimable and therefore inimical to tyranny. This must be the rationale for DfID's diversion of development aid from the Government of Ethiopia, as my noble friend Lady Jay said, because of the serious and repeated violations of rights by the Ethiopian Government. We should note that DfID will be working with other donors to make sure that poor people in Ethiopia will still receive help for education, health and water. DflD's robust refinement of policy on conditionality, published last March, says:
	"The UK Government believes that the realisation of . . . human rights underpins sustainable development . . . Donors have a particular responsibility, as part of their accountability to parliament and the public, to ensure that . . . development assistance is not used in ways that abuse human rights."
	That policy also shows we mean business about democracy. Here, I echo my noble friend Lady Jay's support for Tom Clarke's Bill which, if it passes, might answer some of the very pertinent questions posed by the noble Baroness, Lady D'Souza. I hope that if it passes, your Lordships will allow me to introduce it in this House.
	Finally, the UK development aid programme also needs joined-up support wherever the Government as a whole discuss our common interest in a peaceful world, in Saudi Arabia, in Russia, in Israel, in China and elsewhere. Human rights and democratic practice in one country are vulnerable to the conduct of other countries with influential investment, or with military activity. The forthcoming DfID White Paper and its innovatory consultation initiative are opportunities to discuss the inter-relatedness of all these issues. Kofi Annan summed it up:
	"We will not enjoy development without security, we will not enjoy security without development, and we will not enjoy either without respect for human rights. Unless all these causes are advanced, none will succeed."

The Earl of Sandwich: My Lords, I begin by thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, for introducing the debate, and for reminding the Government of their promises. I also want to congratulate the Secretary of State on his determination to see through the G8 recommendations, and those of the Commission for Africa. It is difficult for him to follow previous Secretaries of State, all of whom have shown tremendous commitment to poverty reduction. It is not easy for him, or anyone, to shine in a new job when your Prime Minister and Chancellor both want to be in on the act. He somehow seems to have weathered all of that.
	The Minister herself may admit that there has been some element of public relations in our aid policy, which can disguise true achievement. That should not cloud the Government's sincerity in eradicating poverty.
	Last year saw the culmination of several initiatives building up to and emerging from our presidency of the EU and the G8. There is now almost a hiatus, as the cost of meeting the MDGs is measured against other spending priorities. There will be a doubling of aid by 2010—an extra US$50 billion worldwide and US$25 billion for Africa. The Africa Commission called for an increase in aid to Africa alone of $50 billion by 2015. Whether or not either of those are realistic figures, we are now closer to reaching a timetable to meet existing UN targets. However, with regard to the UK's aid budget, while delighted that we are well over half way to 0.7 per cent by 2013, I am not clear how we can justify those percentages on the basis of borrowed money.
	The international finance facility is only at a pilot stage. My concern, derived from research, but also from common sense, is that the UK's present proposal leaves open the possibility that aid flows will fall after 2015 when IFF bonds start to be repaid. Surely, that will be unacceptable. What will happen in a recession or when there is a change of government? The amount of money received by the poor cannot be allowed to fall as a percentage of GDP simply because donors have been unable to raise the money. There are other aspects of the IFF that remain unclear, such as which countries will be eligible for funding and what additional conditionality will the IFF impose on borrowers. On the quality and conditionality of UK aid, I agree wholly with my noble friend Lady D'Souza on better targeting. Budget support is not working in Ethiopia, where we have heard that DfID is rightly making a stand for human rights, so aid spending will go down in one of Africa's poorest countries, and probably others.
	On debt, the G8 calls for the immediate cancellation of the debts of 18 of the world's poorest countries, most of which are in Africa. This is a welcome deal: we are told that it is worth $40 billion now, and as much as $55 billion as more countries qualify. It includes writing off $17 billion of Nigeria's debt, as we have heard, in the biggest single debt deal ever. That sounds good for the poor of that country who have waited a long time: 100 per cent debt cancellation for Nigeria was seen as a key breakthrough during the G8 process. But, as the noble Lord, Lord Roberts of Llandudno, rightly said, it now seems that to earn it, Nigeria will have to make a huge payment of $7 billion to the Paris Club to get the remaining 60 per cent of its debt written off. In effect, that will take from Nigeria money that was earmarked for fighting poverty and securing its economy. Are we not pressing the new government, who are responding to calls for good governance and transparency, by insisting on these repayments now? Debt relief, therefore, is rarely what it appears to the public in press releases. In some countries, up to 50 per cent of the debt burden is domestic debt, which is largely owed to international banks. This domestic crisis must also be tackled.
	Moving briefly on to trade, we all know that Hong Kong was disappointing, but there is a commitment to end all export subsidies and to reduce trade distorting domestic subsidies. However, this Government still support the EU policy to introduce economic partnership agreements, even with the poorest countries. I remind the Minister what the Africa Commission said quite bluntly:
	"The EU must ensure that EPAs support development needs. This means not forcing poor countries to liberalise".
	I know that I have raised this before, and the position has slightly improved for the LDCS, but I am still not satisfied that the Cotonou agreement is being honoured.
	One of the best things about the G8 is that it intends to hand over responsibility to developing countries who will,
	"decide, plan and sequence their economic policies to fit with their own development strategies, for which they should be accountable to their people".
	So, for Africa, there is now the Africa Partnership Forum. A joint action plan is being drawn up to incorporate the commitments made by African governments and development partners. It will integrate Africa Union and NePAD programmes, such as the Short Term Action Plan and the African Enterprise Challenge Fund, which will be operational this year, the G8 Africa Action Plan, Gleneagles commitments and the Millennium Review Summit commitments, not to forget the African Peer Review Mechanism.
	These are all welcome initiatives, but they are optimistic. You only have to look at the websites behind all these acronyms to realise how long a process this is going to be. Let donors not be under any illusion that anything much is going to happen this year.
	We are making some progress towards the MDGs, although not as much as the G8 would like. For example, they would like countries to get as close as possible to universal access to HIV/AIDS treatments by 2010, but there is a $3 billion dollar shortfall in the aid programme for AIDS; or that by 2015 all children will have access to good quality, free and compulsory education, and to basic healthcare. We all know that these are admirable goals, but unachievable in that timescale.
	The DfID's interesting 2005 autumn performance report tells its own story of progress, referring to 16 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The poverty target of 46 per cent is on an amber traffic light—no change by 2008. Primary school enrolment is only up if you take out Nigeria, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo—amber again, moving to red. There are not enough girls in schools; gender parity rates are declining, even in eastern and southern African schools, where we would hope to get the best results. Infant mortality is gradually declining—on a green light—but again you have to take out Nigeria and the DRC, which are still over 200 per 1,000 births. Assisted births are unchanged, partly because in Ethiopia only 6 per cent of mothers have birth attendants.
	With such figures, it is no wonder that the PSA targets—in annex B—have had to be revised or redrafted. We must be grateful for this evidence of statistical honesty.
	Finally, but still speaking of figures, it is worth remembering that the statistics of world poverty understandably apply to settled peoples, who live mainly in cities or in agricultural regions. The pastoralists, who occupy the marginal land, the semi-desert, the marshes and the mountain ranges of Africa and elsewhere, are generally unsurveyed and uncounted. But they are a significant number. By and large, they have no political representation and they rarely get a mention in government policies or parliamentary debates even in their own countries.
	It is to the credit of DfID, of the Institute of Development Studies in Sussex and of others such as the Pastoralist Communication Initiative, based in Addis Ababa, that the voice of pastoralists is increasingly being heard. I encourage the Government to continue to strengthen this important work, which I hope will be the subject of a future debate.

Lord Foulkes of Cumnock: My Lords, I should like to add my sincere congratulations to my noble friend Lady Jay on raising this topic, enabling us, first, to emphasise the urgent need to follow our pledges, so that they are not allowed to gather dust on shelves while people starve to death, and, second, to look at the specific action that we can take or urge on others. Our role in the United Kingdom is key.
	We should remember that while we cannot solve all the problems of the world—although sometimes in these Houses we seem to pretend that we can—we can take a positive lead on such issues. As all speakers have acknowledged today, the United Kingdom has been taking a dynamic lead in the past few years—both the United Kingdom Government and, spectacularly, United Kingdom civil society. To quote Gordon Brown, a key figure—as has been acknowledged—in all of this, 2005,
	"has seen a new, progressive consensus under the banner of Make Poverty History",
	which has,
	"arguably, achieved more for the needs of the poor in one short year than have all the isolated acts of individual governments in the last 100 years".
	Those of us who participated in that human ring around Edinburgh in July were moved by the scale of the march and by the sincerity of all those who participated from different religions and backgrounds. It was a fantastic occasion. But we must not be starry-eyed. There is a long way to go, as a number of speakers, including the noble Baroness, Lady D'Souza, have said, with lots of potential pitfalls and blockages on the way.
	We should remember that that key pledge of 0.7 per cent of gross national income, which was included in the G8 Gleneagles summit, was first suggested by the former Canada Prime Minister, Nobel prize winner Lester Pearson, in 1969. I was a youngster then—well, relatively speaking—and the pledge was expected to be realised by 1975. That was more than 30 years ago. It has been reaffirmed in the Brandt report, at Rio and elsewhere. This time, we have to make sure that promises are fulfilled. That underlines the importance of follow-up mechanisms. There is a plethora of international organisations, as my noble friend Lady Jay rightly said. Key, as mentioned in the Gleneagles statement, is the Africa Partnership Forum. I endorse that. However, the international organisations that I have seen while I have worked in this area are still far too weak and need to be strengthened, particularly the United Nations and its agencies.
	In addition, there are no sanctions for failure to implement any of these pledges. We have relatively little leverage on countries that have been mentioned such as Italy, Germany, the United States and Japan. So far only five countries have achieved the target—Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Holland and Luxembourg. Here in the United Kingdom, we came closest to our target in 1979, with 0.5 per cent. We reached a low point of 0.26 per cent in 1997. We are now back on track, set to reach 0.7 per cent by the target date of 2013.
	I do not need to make the obvious party political point. The dates speak for themselves. But I think that some of my noble friends would be disappointed if I did not point out that in spite of David Cameron's great conversion to this issue, even enrolling Sir Bob Geldof, there is not one Tory Back-Bench speaker down to participate in this debate. That exposes the reality of their interest in the issue. I think they have a long way to go.
	I feel very strongly about the importance of civil society. As we know, it is important in the United Kingdom for helping to ensure that we reach the target, but also that poor countries spend wisely and properly.  I am pleased that the CIVICUS World Assembly—CIVICUS is the international organisation of civil society in rich and poor countries around the world—will be held in Glasgow in June 2006, 2007 and 2008. It will be the first time that it will have met consecutively and annually in the same city, trying to build up civil society in all countries around the world and to strengthen the arm of civil society in pushing governments to meet their commitments. I am proud to have been asked to chair the host committee for those three conferences. I am already enjoying the thought of it.
	There is another little question: is 0.7 per cent actually enough? President Lincoln was a tall man, and he was asked how long a man's legs should be. He wisely replied:
	"Long enough to reach the ground".
	We need to ensure that our target is long enough to reach not the ground but the sky, and we have a long way to go. The target of 0.7 per cent, while not yet achieved here and achieved by only five countries, may still not be enough.
	That brings me to trade. While development assistance and debt cancellation are important, improving the terms of trade and removing trade barriers is of even greater importance in pulling people out from poverty. There is an interesting quote in the DfID document, which was referred to earlier, that 300 to 400 million people have been lifted out of a-dollar-a-day poverty since 1980; but, at the same time, Chinese exports grew 30-fold. They were the main driving force behind poverty reduction, and that speaks for itself.
	So what do we need to do? One of the key actions is that we need to strengthen the powers of the poorer countries in the WTO in both negotiations and disputes. France has 165 staff at the World Trade Organisation; Malawi has one. Those are not random examples, but they are very illustrative. I think we should extend the example of the regional negotiating machinery, the RNM, for the Caribbean, which was set up and funded by DfID to strengthen the negotiating power of small, vulnerable Caribbean states in trade negotiations and disputes.
	We also need to follow up all of this in the parliamentary forums to which we all have access—the CPA, the IPU, Parliamentarians for Global Action, and so on. I also support and commend the Bill introduced into another place by Tom Clarke. The forthcoming DfID White Paper will give us another spur, another opportunity, to pursue this issue.
	Four of the most satisfying years of my life were spent as a Minister in the Department for International Development. I really enjoyed it. We had a few turbulent times with Clare as Secretary of State but—although I do not agree with her on everything—she was a great stimulus to international development. It was the DfID White Paper that first put millennium development goals on the map, not only here but around the world.
	We can—and should—encourage local initiatives by local authorities and private firms. The private sector could do a great deal more for international development. I am glad to see the Scottish Executive developing its links with Malawi. We need also to concentrate on good government in developing countries to ensure the propriety of spending so that all the work we do is not discredited. I support Hilary Benn's difficult decision on the withdrawal of aid from the government of Ethiopia because of their violation of democratic and human rights. But it does make it more difficult to achieve our targets. The more governments there are that do not adhere to standards of democracy and human rights, the more difficult it is for us to achieve our targets.
	Finally, we must recall why we are doing all this. I have been talking about mechanisms, targets and so on, but we are doing it because it is morally right to lift people out of poverty; to give them hope and opportunity. It is also in our interests to remove the conditions in which civil unrest and terrorism can breed. It is better for the stability and security of the whole world.

Lord Brett: My Lords, with others, I share a debt of gratitude to the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, for bringing this issue before us. I can say with all honesty that I do not disagree with a word of any of the preceding nine speeches and so, therefore, I shall concentrate on a word that has not yet been said—and that is the four-letter word "jobs". That word has not passed anyone's lips, but do not be surprised: it does not appear in the MDGs either. There is not one word in the MDGs about employment or work.
	It now appears, courtesy of paragraph 47 of the report of the recent summit in September of last year in New York, that a policy of fair globalisation was strongly suggested and it was resolved to make the goal of full and productive employment and decent work for all, including for women and young people, a central objective of its relevant national and international policies, as well as its national development strategies. In that sense, it is opportune that at Davos the World Economic Forum has on its agenda a new item, one which has never been there before, called "creating jobs". My director general—I declare an interest as the United Kingdom and Ireland director of the International Labour Organisation—yesterday put a statement before it of how the ILO sees the world of development and the world of jobs. I do not believe that in this day and age you can divorce development from globalisation. They are intertwined and interlinked.
	It is important to look at where we are in terms of the bottom line. The bottom line here of eradicating poverty has to be through the mechanism of providing jobs. As the Secretary of State Hilary Benn said last Friday, in opening the consultation on the White Paper:
	"Poor people in poor countries want the same things that we do here—they want to have a decent job, to meet their basic needs, to lead a fulfilled life, take good care of their children and have a role in their community and in society".
	However, my director general yesterday reported in Davos that we have a world that is sliding into an unprecedented global jobs crisis. Half the workers in the world are the working poor, living in families that survive on less than $2 per day. They work in a vast informal sector—from farms to fishing and from agriculture to alleyways—without benefits, social security or healthcare. All those components, in our view, put together, add up to decent work. Unemployment when it means people with no work at all is at its highest point ever, and it continues to rise. In the past 10 years, official unemployment has grown by more than 25 per cent, and now stands, according to ILO figures, at 192 million worldwide, or 6 per cent of the global workforce—but we all know that that is a very small tip of a very large unemployment iceberg.
	When people cannot find work at home, they migrate, and in the present climate labour migration easily becomes a source of tension—not to speak of human trafficking and other similar activities. That seems to be a phenomenon worldwide. We have hope that global growth will provide the solution. The good news is that global growth looked quite healthy in 2005, at 4.3 per cent, and the world output increased by $2.5 trillion. Unfortunately, that is not creating the jobs required simply to employ those entering the labour market, not to mention the many legions of those unemployed. We shall need to create some 14 million jobs each year over the next decade just to keep up with the number of people seeking work. Therefore, our problem is very simple. The policies that we are putting in place today do not seem to have the results that we wish for them—in other words, we are not meeting the need for people to get out of poverty by having a job.
	The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, referred to China. One can see a correlation there between employment and raising people out of poverty. It is not as if the global jobs crisis hits the poor alone; it will have substantial political effects, none of which is likely to be too pleasant for any of us. In democratic countries, in Africa or elsewhere, where unemployment or informal employment is high, people are expressing disappointment that democracy is not delivering economic benefits. That threatens to undermine democratic institutions. One issue is that of youth unemployment. Half the world's unemployed—some 86 million—the ILO recognises as being young people. Young, unemployed, educated people without a future or a job are a real fundamental threat to democracy and stability in a number of African countries, if not on a wider scale.
	People are asking whether governments, the private sector and indeed democracy can deliver decent work. There is a creeping growth of protectionist tendencies which is undermining those efforts to make a fairer world with regard to trade. Demands for a greater migration control are coming with xenophobic overtones and undertones, and they are growing. Elections are now being won or lost on more and better jobs issues, and the credibility of newly democratic counties with newly democratic governments is undermined when those politicians cannot deliver. In their place we will find populist, authoritarian or extreme ideological players.
	The ILO believes that it is not all gloom, but it requires a very real shift in thinking. In fact, we need a paradigm shift in economic and social policies. We need to put decent work objectives at the centre of national and international development effort and we need a new balance of economic and social policies that stresses macro-economic stability as well as policies aimed at formalising markets, improving competitiveness, expanding social protection and channelling the abundant entrepreneurial energies of people working in the informal economy. In addition, economic growth continues to be a necessity and an objective as a means of achieving economic development and job creation. It is that job creation part that seems to be missing from the policies that we now put forward.
	In DfID there has been something of a change of policy. A document was produced some months ago that made the point that economic growth must be part of any poverty reduction strategy. That is a step in the right direction. The UK Government's record, as other noble Lords have said, is a well-deserved one. The plaudits may not be as big as some of the brickbats they get for not having achieved more, but they have done a tremendous amount and continue to be the great hope in achieving change across the broader G8 spectrum of countries.
	We need to see how that can be done. The White Paper coming up is an opportunity for civil society to contribute, which, as people have said, is so important. It is a way of looking at what we are doing and how we are doing it. There is a real need for the international organisations, including my own, to raise their game. There is a need for much greater coherence in the United Nations. There is a problem when we have people coming in and all trying to help, whether it is post-tsunami or post-Darfur, and there is no coherence. There is much in the UN reform package that the UK Government are pressing that is overdue and well deserved. In the ILO we are trying to play a full part in that. We are grateful to the UK Government because the UK is the second largest funder of the International Labour Organisation—the largest funding comes from the United States. It is recognised in the partnership agreements that the ILO has that employment and the provision of decent work is playing a growing part in how the UK Government see their international development work.
	There is one other area on which the UK Government could put some emphasis. If we get wealth created from globalisation, how do we distribute it? Not, frankly, in the way it is being distributed in China at the moment, creating a few multimillionaires with poverty surrounding them. We do so by introducing decent social security as part of decent work. Decent pensions, decent sick pay, and other decent social benefits are a way of sharing wealth. The UK Government could again provide a lead to ensure that decent social security becomes something that is wanted in Europe and other parts of the world. Only three countries in Asia have got it to any extent: Australia, New Zealand and Japan. It is another area in which we can achieve the kind of outcomes that really seek to eradicate poverty wherever it occurs. If the UK Government and the Minister could take notice of this and the statements I have heard from other colleagues and offer some leadership, they will find that there are other countries not as far advanced that would be willing to join with us.

Lord Desai: My Lords, I owe an apology to my noble friend Lady Jay for being late when she opened the debate, which I congratulate her on securing. A lot has been said already by many people, and expertly, on the G8 and Gleneagles commitments. I will take a different angle, and also relate to some of the things said by my noble friends Lord Foulkes and Lord Brett.
	First, it is right that we make the commitment we have made. It is amazing that a Prime Minister and a Chancellor of the Exchequer have gone out of their way for the first time in British history and put their names to a commitment to international development. We have to recognise that this has not happened before. Although we attempted to sneer and raise objections, the sheer sincerity and passion that they have brought to this cause has to be appreciated. Our view of development and how these MDGs are going to be achieved are still somewhat talked down. The noble Baroness, Lady D'Souza, showed some scepticism about some of these things. We tend to think that sums of money spent or committed crank some kind of handle, and out come things that we like to see, such as falling infant mortality.
	The process, of course, is much more complex. Even the best that aid can do is limited compared with what local society can do; we need to understand more thoroughly why, in cases such as Nigeria, which the noble Lord, Lord Roberts, discussed, it is often not a lack of resources per se, but the way they are used and funnelled that is the issue. For some time at such meetings I have been saying: "Let Africa learn from Asia". It is very interesting that right now we are not agonised about Asia. Twenty years ago it was a basket-case. I remember Henry Kissinger saying in the mid-1960s that if only India and China could feed themselves, all the world's problems would be solved. Today we do not talk of India and China just feeding themselves: they have become global economic powers.
	There is a lot to learn from Asia, because it has a similar experience of colonialism. It has had problems of population growth and of what people used to think were inappropriate cultural values regarding development, family structures and so on. An important part of the Asian case is what I might call responsive governance. They are not always democratic—very often they are not—but Asian governments and political arrangements have always been responsive to what the grassroots have said. Few Asian politicians have fled abroad and lived in the south of France or stacked up their money in Switzerland. In Asia there has been very little of the outflow of capital that happened in Africa. We have to understand why this happens. Why is it that even the most corrupt Asian leader displays his wealth at home and not abroad? Why does he feel so rooted in the culture?
	Others have said that civil society is important, but so is a political society in which opposition government is responsive to the needs of the people it serves. Somehow, through some process, there is that communication. We need to encourage, through our various efforts, that kind of responsive political society in Africa. Ultimately development will be the responsibility of the country's political society. Civil society may help, as may NGOs, but eventually it is responsible political leadership that will have to deliver development. We have to think about how we do that.
	My noble friend Lord Foulkes mentioned trade. Its importance in development cannot be exaggerated. It is the reason why Asia and Africa reversed their fortunes. Africa was ahead of Asia in the 1950s and 1960s, and almost the 1970s, but then Asia moved ahead because it committed itself to open economies, to trade and to building up a private sector—with government help—that could efficiently compete abroad. It is only when the private sector can create productive jobs, and where private sector businesses are profitable, that we will see the economy grow at rates sufficient to eliminate poverty.
	Trade is important. I was disappointed by the way the European Union behaved in Hong Kong. Despite the best efforts of Peter Mandelson, it is still a fact that the EU is a villain when it comes to world trade negotiations. The protection of a small number of European farmers is holding up real liberalisation. That is a great shame. Our Government are committed to a much more generous settlement in the Doha round, and the obstacles do not come from the British side. The EU is a disgrace so far as international trade negotiations are concerned. Whatever it may give by way of aid, it takes away more through its distorted trade policies.
	There is not much time left before the forthcoming negotiations in Doha. I know that the hands of the EU negotiator, Peter Mandelson, are tied because 26 other governments are involved, but we urge him somehow to convey that a settlement which is generous to developing countries, both to the least developed countries and middling—developing—countries, is absolutely essential for the eradication of poverty in the world.
	It is heart-warming when people show their commitment and when they march to make poverty history, as they did at Edinburgh. But by way of a damp squib, I have to say that, in economics, not only are there no free lunches, but there is no fast food either. It is all going to take a lot of time. Debt cancellation is a great thing, but what it saves is the flow payment that you have to make to service the debt. The resources which come to the developing country whose debt has been cancelled are not £17 billion or whatever it is, but what was being paid to service the debt, which is a fraction of that amount. We have to calculate not only how much debt has been cancelled, but precisely how we improve the flow of resources to those countries, partly from debt cancellation and partly from aid.
	There is a third factor which we should not underestimate and which today is larger than the flow of foreign aid: the flow of private capital. How we make these economies, poor as they are, suitable for receiving the flow of private capital is the third crucial element in encouraging growth.
	I draw confidence from the case of Asia that poverty can be eased. While it has not been eradicated there, it has been considerably reduced. If Africa can learn from Asia, it too can reduce poverty.

Lord Hughes of Woodside: My Lords, I join in the congratulations offered to my noble friend Lady Jay on introducing this debate. It is certainly a good time to do so, with a White Paper on the future of our aid programme having gone out to consultation. It has been a very exciting 12 months. We have had the Africa Commission; the G8 summit; and the massive demonstrations of the Make Poverty History campaign. There has been only one blemish in the past 12 months; that is, that some of the campaigning organisations have derided the decisions taken by the Commission for Africa and the G8 and have said, "It was all a publicity stunt to massage the egos of the politicians".
	It is very dangerous to say that, first, because politicians will say, "Why bother?". They do not expect plaudits when they do good things, but they should not be denigrated. Secondly, it is a grave mistake to say to the millions of people who were involved in the Make Poverty History campaign, "You didn't achieve a thing". Many of those people who took part in Edinburgh had probably not engaged previously in serious political discussion or involvement in these matters. We should encourage them to do so. We ought to say that it is true that we haven't made poverty history, but that we have made a very good start.
	A lot has been said about accountability. I say in passing, although it is extremely important, that I welcome my right honourable friend Tom Clarke's Bill in the other place. I hope that we will see it soon in this place, where we can give it a great deal of progress.
	There have been many reports about poverty in different continents, and globally, which have gathered dust and come to nothing. My noble friend Lord Foulkes mentioned the Pearson report. We all had high hopes that something would arise from that, but it has not happened. I think that the Commission for Africa will succeed. For the first time, there was a real engagement between the north and the south. There was a real partnership in drawing out the Commission for Africa. It has many recommendations, of which I will mention only two. The first is capacity building, which means that we have to try to make sure that the governments in the under-developed or developing world can use the aid money to the best effect to the benefit of their people. That can be very difficult to do.
	The second recommendation, which is of the greatest importance to Africa, relates to peace and stability. If we do not have peace and stability, we have carnage and the slaughter of the innocents that is going on as we speak. That has a long-term effect, as well as immediate effects. In December 2004, under the auspices of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, I went to Angola, which was just recovering from 30 years of war. I had previously visited the country in 1975, when the colonial oppressors—Portugal—had been moved out. The difference made in the intervening years was devastating. The effects of the war are there to be seen. What had happened in that period, which I frankly had not appreciated, was that the capacity of government at every level to control events had gone. People had forgotten how to govern, because the only issue that mattered was winning the war. That is perhaps a lesson that we have to learn in other parts of the world, although I simply mention that in passing. We have to do everything that we can to try to help the people there to overcome the debilitation caused by the civil war and to get back on an even keel.
	I have a specific question for the Minister. I apologise for not giving her advance warning of it. I do not expect an answer today, but I hope that she will write to me. There were persistent rumours over a year ago that DfID was about to withdraw from Angola. When they came back, the three MPs—Jeremy Corbyn, John Cummings and Ronnie Campbell—went to see the Secretary of State, who gave an absolute assurance that there was no question of DfID withdrawing from Angola. These rumours are coming out again. I know that Angola is a very oil-rich country—perhaps people think that it does not need assistance. However, it needs assistance and it needs to be confident that it has friends who are willing to help it in times of trouble. I hope that the Minister will convey that message. Perhaps we will hear about that.
	Books have been written about development for many years. One of the first that I read was in 1953; it was called The War on World Poverty: An appeal to the Conscience of Mankind and was by Harold Wilson. In 1973, Judith Hart—my noble friend, as it turned out—wrote Aid and Liberation. Harold Wilson and Judith Hart approached the matter from slightly different ends of the spectrum, shall I say. Throughout that time and ever since, there has been a constant debate over how we can deliver. How can we make sure that the aid actually reaches the people? The truth is that we do not know yet.
	There is a debate on who should decide priorities. I think that it is now agreed that aid with strings—with the metropolitan country deciding what the priority should be—has gone. A sub-debate is also going on. Within the countries, who should determine priorities and who should be in charge of delivery? Some believe—and I think that the Secretary of State accepts—that major issues of roads, transport and infrastructure can be dealt with only by the state. However, at another level, there is also a real debate about the role of civil society and the NGOs. In my limited experience—I do not pretend that my experience is exhaustive—many NGOs and civil society bodies are hostile to government. They are not necessarily politically hostile, in the sense that they disagree with the political objectives of the government; they just do not like government. In many cases, they want to determine the priorities. I can understand governments saying, "Hold on a minute; we're the elected body and we must determine the priority".
	Yet we should not come down too hard and fast on one side or the other. One of the disappointing things about modern society is that we all want certainty. There must be a magic bullet—a solution—so that we can say, "That's good, we've solved the problem". In issues of poverty throughout the world, there is no one solution. Every one of us must be involved, and every part of society, whatever one's views, should be encouraged to take part.
	I want to mention two points in response to the comments of my noble friend Lord Brett about growth, development and investment. A lot of people, including my noble friend Lord Desai, say that we need investment to promote growth. One criticism of, for example, President Mbeki—it is a valid criticism in that it is factual—is that an enormous amount of investment has now gone into South Africa. That investment has produced a lot of jobs but it has also destroyed many of them. The developing countries are no different from our own country in that investment in modern technology destroys as many, if not more, jobs than it creates. We have the capacity to absorb some of that damage because of our wealth and our welfare system, but many of the countries that we speak about do not have the capacity to counter that. Clearly we have to do something to offset those effects.
	There is no doubt that in discussions as far back as 1953 and in the Pearson report it has been said that there must be an end to export subsidies. That is agreed without question. It has been said that there must be fair trade, but it has not happened. The developed world has said great things about how we have a moral duty but it has not delivered on that moral duty. We have to deliver in many respects.
	Over the years we have had our disappointments, things have happened that we have not liked, and we have been associated with things that perhaps we would not have wished to be associated with. But I believe that the prospects of making poverty history are better now than they have been over the past century and certainly in this century.

Lord Sewel: My Lords, I join other noble Lords in thanking and congratulating my noble friend Lady Jay of Paddington on securing this debate. I want to concentrate to an extent on trade liberalisation because I am an advocate of that, but I do so, for once, in the cautionary context of the reform of the European sugar regime. I shall draw heavily on the report of our own Select Committee on the European Union, Too much or too little? Changes to the EU Sugar Regime.
	Pre-reform, the EU sugar regime possessed all the worst aspects of the common agricultural policy. There may still be some noble Lords who remember how much I love the common agricultural policy—not a lot. The features of the regime were import controls, export subsidies and domestic quotas. It led to a system in which the European price of sugar was approximately three times the world price. It crowded out efficient European exporters and cost the EU taxpayer £1.1 billion a year in the great tradition of the common agricultural policy. It also cushioned inefficient European producers, and we ended up with the wonderful example of Finland being a sugar producer.
	The WTO-driven reform—and it was WTO-driven—tackled export subsidies to a large extent and brought in a price cut. The price cut was not as large as some of us would have wished. It was a cut of about one-third so that the European price was approximately twice the world price. Noble Lords may be thinking "so far, so good", but there is a "but" and it is a big one. There is the real possibility that the cost of reform, particularly in human terms, will be borne disproportionately by some of the poorest workers in some of the poorest communities in the developing world.
	Cane sugar producers in the African, Caribbean and Pacific countries—the so-called ACP countries—enjoyed preferential access to the European market. They sold into that market not at the world price but at the European price. The fact that those countries were ever sugar producers is very much a legacy of empire, and as such, we have a continuing responsibility towards the workers.
	The reform of the sugar regime will impact differentially on the ACP countries. Some of them are already competing, or are close to being in the position to do so, at the new price level. There are others who, with modernisation, new investment and restructuring, have the potential to become efficient and competitive. But, there are others—especially in the Caribbean—who are among the poorest and most dependent on sugar. Because of constraints of scale or difficulties of production, they simply cannot reorganise to compete at the new price. For them the outlook is bleak. Not only is sugar production, which underpins the local economy, unlikely to survive, the social infrastructure, which itself is largely dependent on the sugar industry, is very much under threat. That is potentially disastrous.
	In some countries it is difficult to see where alternative economic opportunities lie, at least in the short term. The worrying thing is that there is an alternative agricultural crop; the trouble is that it is highly illegal.
	What has been the EU response? For European producers there is a general level of compensation costing around €6 billion. For ACP countries there is €40 million in 2006, and I understand that the Commission proposes a time-limited annual fund of €190 million from 2007. There is a slight query about how this was reported in Hansard. I think a typo got into the Answer given by the Lord President on 11 January when a £ sign replaced the € sign. It makes a difference.
	Set against the scale of the problem, this is a far from adequate response, especially for those countries that have no alternative but to get out of sugar. It is often a staple crop. There is a danger that the EU will be seen as more keen to cushion its own producers from the problems of market adjustment than to protect some of the poorest communities in the developing world from the most brutal aspects of economic change. That is unacceptable.
	The ACP countries that can modernise need sufficient aid to enable their industry to make that transition and become efficient and effective producers. For those who have to get out of sugar, the challenge is much more difficult. There is an urgent need to at least maintain some form of income support in these countries before their economic base disappears, or to at least stabilise the position. Development strategies must be identified and put in place. I echo what has already been said that they cannot be imposed top-down. They must work with the people and communities, and attract private investment as well as state development aid. EU development aid is vital in this context, however. It is difficult to see how effective strategies could otherwise be put in place at a level of funding which gives them at least the best chance of succeeding.
	Changing so fundamentally the industrial and economic base of a country cannot be achieved overnight. It is beset with significant economic and, perhaps more importantly, social and political dangers. If that goes badly wrong—there must be a risk of that—we, at least in part, will be responsible.

Baroness Northover: My Lords, I too thank the noble Baroness, Lady Jay of Paddington, for securing this timely debate and introducing it so comprehensively and effectively. Once again, your Lordships have demonstrated a huge breadth of knowledge and concern about international affairs and how best we tackle appalling poverty across the world.
	The Make Poverty History coalition must be congratulated on bringing the issue of poverty in developing countries to such prominence. They have brought it into the centre of British politics. It is often difficult to get competing charities to work together. They need and wish to get their own name out into the public arena, otherwise they starve themselves of funds. To decide that, in fact, their ultimate aim is much more important than their individual efforts, and to subsume that to a collective effort, was quite extraordinary. I would like to see similar examples in other fields, such as cancer, where there are myriad charities.
	The involvement of Bob Geldof and, in particular, his concerts—which clashed with marches, on occasion—caused some concern. It is a tribute to the Make Poverty History coalition that they were able to work with this and harness the amazing effect of those concerts. Certainly, my 16 year-old son came away from the Hyde Park concert moved and motivated. He had had no plans to attend the Edinburgh marches. It takes different approaches to strike the right chord for the right audience. For many young people, the concerts—and the sight of the girl from Ethiopia—struck that chord. It certainly did for my children.
	The G8 countries—especially the UK, because of its pivotal role—were asked in 2005 to deliver key promises to the developing countries. Africa is the only continent that is going backwards in efforts to reach the MDGs, as we have heard. For example, if current trends continue, sub-Saharan Africa is not predicted to reach the first of the MDGs—that on halving poverty—until 2147. One in every five Africans is affected by conflict, an area which the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, rightly emphasised. Primary school enrolment and completion in Africa are the lowest in the world. Sub-Saharan Africa has around 30 million people infected with HIV/AIDS.
	Make Poverty History had three aims to tackle such terrible problems: increase aid, reduce debt and open up opportunities for trade. This debate focuses on the G8. That is, as others have said, perhaps a pity. It is surely through economic development and trade—as the noble Baroness, Lady Jay of Paddington, the noble Lord, Lord Desai, and others have said—that real progress will occur. We ourselves took that path, of the agricultural and industrial revolutions, with the rapid expansion of trade, especially in the 19th century. Trade had opened up and funded renaissance Italy. Trade has opened up China and India. Trade promotes—or should—job creation, an issue rightly raised by the noble Lord, Lord Brett.
	We have just gone through yet another stage of the so-called development round of the WTO, with anything but development on the agenda. What progress can the Minister report from Geneva, where discussions are currently ongoing? Are we close to any kind of ministerial agreement on making progress? When will we see, as the noble Lord, Lord Sewel, demonstrated, the relief of poverty put at the heart of those negotiations?
	Turning to the G8, in my view the most important commitment was that there should be universal access to HIV/AIDS treatment by 2010. The main concern now must be to convert that rhetoric into reality. As ActionAid has put it, exceptional action will need to be generated if increased resources are to be forthcoming to make drugs affordable and accessible and to strengthen health services. Perhaps the Minister can tell us what exceptional actions will be taken to try to achieve that. Unless the US, Japan and the European Union can be persuaded to contribute on a far larger scale, that cannot be delivered.
	For me, Botswana is something of a template. Gates and Merck have put vast resources into tackling aid there at every level: prevention, attempts at culture change, free ARVs to all who come forward who need them, universal testing offered to anyone who comes through the health system or anyone who wants to be tested and a strengthening of the health system. That is in a country where almost half of the adult population is now infected with HIV/AIDS. So if the AIDS pandemic can be reversed, surely that is where we might hope to see it. That shows the level of investment now needed, not only across sub-Saharan Africa, where the pandemic currently rages, but in India, China, Russia, elsewhere in eastern Europe, the Caribbean and worldwide.
	I note that after the global fund replenishment conference, which was held in London last September, there was a $3.3 billion shortfall. That was immediately after the G8 meeting which made the pledge. What action will the UK Government, among other G8 nations, take to ensure that this gap is filled? As other noble Lords have said, there are fears that some G8 countries may not be able to fulfil the commitments that they have made on AIDS. Germany and Japan cause particular concern. I would like to know what is being done about that.
	Progress on development will be undermined if progress is not made on climate change, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, so clearly put it. The poorest countries of the world suffer the most in that respect. That can be seen if one looks at the effect of the desert expansion on the conflict in Sudan. There is still no clear recognition of the scale and urgency of that problem. At the G8 there were no targets or timeframes for reducing emissions in line with scientific understanding. When will the G8 put into practice at least the agreements that were made three years ago at the world summit on sustainable development to assist Africa to reduce the effects of climate change and disasters?
	The G8 has confirmed the proposed deal by the G7 finance ministers to cancel 100 per cent of debt owed to multinational institutions. That is a significant step, but it is worth bearing in mind that it will provide fewer than $1 billion this year—the equivalent of no more than $1 per person in the countries that are due to benefit. The money to pay for debt relief seems to be coming from overall aid budgets and so does not represent new funds. As my noble friend Lord Roberts, the right reverend Prelate and the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, have said, one apparent breakthrough in the G8 process was the 100 per cent debt cancellation deal for Nigeria, but it turns out, as ever, that that is not quite as it seems. I look forward to the Minister's comments on why that is the case.
	One area that was aired last year was the need for a fully funded UN disaster relief standby fund. The slowness of the relief effort in Kashmir shows how necessary that is. I note that Hilary Benn is trying to drum up support for that. I would like to know what progress he is making.
	Rhetoric is not reality, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, and others have said. What of implementation? The African Partnership Forum, which consists of donors and members of the AU, has been mandated with overseeing the implementation of the G8 agreement. It is in the process of agreeing a joint action plan which should be reviewed for the first time in October 2006. A copy of that action plan has been posted on the DfID website, but I have been told that it appears to be incomplete. What is happening on that? What is being done—as the noble Baroness, Lady D'Souza made clear in her devastating critique must be done—to ensure that more aid is more effective aid and is not simply wasted?
	Last year was a triumph for Make Poverty History. Of course, all that might have been secured was not secured. But in terms of bringing this issue to the forefront of people's minds, competing with earlier versions of "Big Brother" and suchlike, it was a stunning success. All political parties must respond and have done so. Our task as an opposition party is to welcome what the Government have done so far and to encourage far more effort, especially in delivering immediately what is needed for HIV/AIDS. Without that, a generation will be left as orphans and will then die from that awful disease. We can do no less than take this campaign forward for them.

Baroness Rawlings: My Lords, I too thank the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, for initiating the debate. Africa's problems affect us all, at home and abroad, not just in requests for development aid, debt forgiveness and emergency relief but in lost opportunities for overseas investment, marketing and, as the noble Lord, Lord Brett, said, jobs. In the UK, Africa's instability increases the number of refugees and asylum seekers from conflict areas and oppressive regimes and places more demands on British troops to serve as peacekeepers. We all agree that there are overwhelming humanitarian grounds for development aid to Africa. Money, not necessarily aid, is needed to provide the basic infrastructure and services that we all take for granted but, as the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, so rightly stressed, we have to start with peace and stability.
	The continuing prevalence of diseases such as polio and malaria, which are curable with sufficient well targeted resources, is a global embarrassment. Polio should have been wiped out by the end of 2005. That deadline has slipped to the end of 2006. The final eradication of the disease is still achievable and will demonstrate what focused development aid, with a clear aim, can achieve. What steps are being taken to prevent further slippage of the deadline? This near-success gives hope in the continuing fight against the spread of HIV/AIDS which, as many noble Lords said, is a major crisis tearing apart more and more communities and families.
	Those are all good reasons for increasing development aid and supporting the millennium goals set by the UN. The debt relief announced last year was welcome, as we heard from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester and the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, as was the Chancellor's increase in the aid budget to 0.47 per cent of gross national income. Can the Minister assure us that that will increase to 0.7 per cent by 2013? It is vital that these reasons are not dictated by sentiment and media hype and that we continue to address the issues once the media spotlight has gone. As many noble Lords said, we cannot help many millions of people lift themselves out of poverty, disease and instability by treating them as passive recipients of periodic food aid. The recent near famine in the Sahel was a preventable crisis, fully anticipated by local organisations and made worse by promised but undelivered aid, yet funds were not forthcoming until the media showed starving children on television.
	If we wish to continue giving indefinite aid to Africa, we must concentrate on development aid that gives Africans the tools to help themselves. Yet, as the noble Baroness, Lady D'Souza, stressed clearly in her most interesting speech, so much of our aid is not directed in that way. It is given, restriction-free, to governments that are among the most corrupt in the world. It is wasted on high-profile, ill thought-out statement projects. It often hires expensive western consultants to find out how further aid should be spent. In the worst cases, it has been said that both oil and aid consolidate corruption. Of course, not all development aid is misspent or wasted. Much good has been done with our money. The noble Baroness, Lady D'Souza, spelt out that the sums spent in Africa are enormous, so clearly there is something wrong with the lack of results.
	We often hear stories of African presidents buying fleets of luxury cars rather than providing clean water for their population; clearly, development aid should not be channelled through their political systems. I repeat: good governance, accountability and transparency are key. What safeguards exist to make certain of having greater transparency and accurate reporting of DfID's accounts, so that the UK pledge to achieve the UN millennium development goals will be met by 2013?
	An inconsistency in approach needs to be examined. Why does the European Union trumpet the success of the Kimberley process, which restricts the market in conflict diamonds, yet fails to ban the illegal timber imports that come from exploiting the Congolese rain forest—particularly following allegations that Zimbabwean logging firms, supported by Zimbabwean troops, are milking those resources? Why are we considering wiping clean Nigeria's debt of $17 billion, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Roberts, when we have increased our arms sales to that country tenfold in the past five years? We have heard fascinating ideas, as always, from the noble Lord, Lord Desai, on Nigeria's case versus the Asian problems and answers.
	I have had little time to address all the issues, but this speech would not be complete without a quick look to the immediate future of the G8 and, by association, its commitments as a whole. Those will be determined by the Russian presidency, which has not yet been mentioned this afternoon. The use of gas supplies as a political tool earlier this month added to growing concerns regarding the direction Russia seems to be taking. What plans do the Government have to discuss the G8 commitments with its new president? Will the Government ask President Putin to look at how the disappointing results of the WTO December meeting affect those commitments and how he will ensure that the G8 is in line to double targeted and accountable aid to Africa in real terms by 2010?
	The Government's commitments at last year's G8 summit were well intentioned. We welcome the priority that Africa is being given, but there are still so many unanswered questions. I hope that the Minister can assure us that the DfID White Paper review, due this summer, will take account of the concerns raised today. We need to be reassured that African governments and the new president of the G8 genuinely share our determination to create a better future for the people of Africa.

Baroness Royall of Blaisdon: My Lords, I, too, am grateful to my noble friend Lady Jay for having secured this important debate, which provides a fine opportunity to keep development on the agenda. Like so many noble Lords who have spoken today, she has a strong interest, expertise and a fine reputation in international development. International development issues are a key policy area for this Government. As president of the G8, we were able to secure vital advances on aid, particularly to Africa, on debt relief and on climate change. I assure the noble Baroness, Lady Rawlings, that we will maintain a constant dialogue with Russia during its presidency of the G8 to ensure that all parties fulfil their commitments.
	That 2005 would provide an unprecedented opportunity to improve the lives of millions of poor people in Africa was never in doubt following my right honourable friend the Prime Minister's announcement that Africa would be one of the two priorities for our G8 presidency and, of course, his chairing of the Africa Commission. Africa also featured prominently in the UK's EU presidency, which culminated in agreement on a new strategic partnership between Europe and Africa. The noble Baroness, Lady Rawlings, clearly set out the impact that the fragile situation in Africa had on the UK and Europe. The right reverend Prelate was right to dwell on Africa and the results of the obscene gap between rich and poor. In relation to corruption and governments, I assure him that we share the concerns about the damaging effects of corruption on development, for we know that corruption hits the poorest people the hardest. Tackling corruption is an essential part of our poverty-reduction objectives. At Gleneagles, the G8 agreements included helping Africa to fight corruption—for example, through increasing support for the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative.
	I note the point raised by my noble friend Lord Desai about responsive governments in Asia and the lessons that might be learnt in Africa. I hope that that might be dealt with in the White Paper. Many of last year's achievements would simply not have been possible without the coalition of NGOs, trade unions, church groups and others that formed the Make Poverty History campaign and the similar campaigns throughout the world. Through their lobbying and engagement, they played a key role in raising awareness of international development issues and the injustice of global poverty. It was a fine example of the way in which real change can be brought about by politics and how coalitions of people working together to influence governments on a global level can bring about change. The noble Baroness, Lady D'Souza, referred to collective action to alleviate poverty—for a collective utopia. It is our duty to manage that utopia in the interests of humanity.
	More and better aid, debt relief and fair trade are critical components of delivering a more just and less unequal world. Aid well spent makes a real difference. The proportion of people in developing countries living in extreme poverty has fallen from 28 per cent in 1990 to 22 per cent now. That is still a gross injustice. Our goal must be to eradicate poverty, but real progress has been made. For example, the number of children at school in Mozambique has doubled in five years, and nine out of 10 children in Tanzania are now enrolled in school. Noble Lords have rightly welcomed the Private Member's International Development (Reporting and Transparency) Bill, currently under consideration in the other place. The Government strongly support that Bill. We look forward to it arriving in this House, especially now that we know that it will be piloted by my noble friend Lady Whitaker.
	The noble Baroness, Lady D'Souza, was right to point out the importance of this Bill. The provision of aid is complex, but I am glad that she recognises the excellent reputation of DfID in accountability and evaluation. But, of course, commitment to aid is not enough. We need other donors to contribute their fair shares. That is why, at the Gleneagles summit, the commitment to increase official development assistance by US$50 billion a year for all developing countries by 2010 was a significant advance. Half of that increase will go to Africa, doubling aid to the continent over the next five years. EU member states led the way on this when they made an historic commitment to double annual EU aid to all developing countries by 2010. The 15 member states also committed to achieving the UN's 0.7 per cent ODA/GNI target by 2015, but the UK, like some others, intends to do better than that. On present plans, we will reach 0.7 per cent by 2013.
	As my noble friend Lady Jay and others have mentioned, it is important that G8 and EU members keep to their commitments on aid volumes. How they do that is up to them. We are encouraging them to sign up to the international finance facility. The EC and EU member states are reviewing progress and volume commitments in May 2006. We welcome the increase in aid, but the Government recognise the need for the development assistance to be made available more quickly to developing countries. My right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer's proposal for an international finance facility, the IFF, will supplement the aid increases by raising funds for the sale of bonds on the international capital market.
	The noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, said that front loading must not mean a drop in aid flows post-2015. The Government believe, however, that aid flows beyond 2015 could be considerably higher than the current levels of aid, even allowing for IFF bond repayments. Higher GNI will mean larger flows, if the ODA/GNI ratio remains constant. We expect that the ODA/GNI ratio will get closer to the 0.7 per cent target by 2015, and we expect new countries to have become donors by then.
	As a first step, last September the UK, together with France, Spain, Italy and Sweden, launched a new international finance facility for immunisation. Alongside additional contributions announced by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the facility will ensure the provision of an additional US$4 billion over the next 10 years to tackle some of the deadliest diseases in some of the world's poorest countries. Those additional resources could save the lives of 5 million children by 2015 and more thereafter.
	It is entirely unacceptable that 30,000 children die unnecessarily each day as a result of poverty. That is why DfID is supporting work to strengthen health systems to deliver better and more equitable health services in developing countries. That includes improved services for mothers and babies and support for a number of international initiatives to combat diseases that affect children. Those include Roll Back Malaria, the Partnership for Safe Motherhood and Neonatal Health, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation and research into child survival.
	The noble Baroness, Lady Northover, asked what DfID's role had been in improving co-ordination on tackling AIDS. As she will know, in March the UK hosted a meeting—Making the Money Work—of leaders from donor and developing country governments, NGOs and civil society. As a result, the Global Task Team was established to make specific time-band recommendations to improve co-ordination and to enhance the quality of national responses.
	My noble friend Lord Hunt of Chesterton provided a striking illustration of what I think could be described as an aid culture. Aid dependency is certainly a risk that DfID recognises and addresses at the design phase of a programme. It was difficult, however, for development partners to manage that risk post-tsunami. Some implications were not taken account of. Steps have now been put in place to try and address them. For example, support was provided to enable individuals to work on rebuilding their villages for wages. That promoted ownership of the recovery process and reinstated the damaged work ethic. I note the important issues that he raised about scientific and other information and the fact that such advice to governments in developing countries was essential. Clearly, more work is needed on those issues, and I hope, again, that that might be addressed by the White Paper. I should add, however, that DfID does provide small sums of money for activities such as sponsoring visits to key events, so that participants from developing countries can attend.
	As well as aid, some countries need more debt relief. The heavily indebted poor countries—HIPC—initiative has already delivered US $70 billion in debt relief to 27 of the world's poorest countries. Again, the Government recognised that more needed to be done. At last June's meeting of the G8 finance ministers, a ground-breaking initiative was agreed, under which HIPCs will receive 100 per cent cancellation of their remaining multilateral debts to the institutions. Under the initiative, debt relief worth up to US$50 billion will be delivered to 38 poor countries that have demonstrated their commitment to poverty reduction and sound public financial management. This will free up resources for more spending on health and education and accelerate progress towards the MDGs. Debt cancellation will go ahead immediately for 19 countries—13 of which are African—as they have already reached completion point under the HIPC initiative.
	My noble friend Lord Hunt asked about the Defra/DfID report on climate change in Africa. Apparently the report was discussed at the G8 Environment and Development Ministerial held in the UK in March, as part of our presidency. The report recognised the need for more work to be done on climate change in Africa, and that is now being taken forward.
	The noble Lord, Lord Roberts, raised the very important issue of Nigeria's debt. The Paris Group agreed a debt deal to write off about 60 per cent of the value of Nigeria's outstanding debts. For its part, Nigeria has agreed to put the annual savings of around US$1 billion into a fund to be used for poverty reduction programmes, including employing an extra 120,000 teachers and putting 3.5 million children into school. The Nigerian Government requested the debt deal in support of their own economic reforms and development strategy. The UK worked very hard to help secure this deal, which provides at least US$1 billion a year to be used for poverty reduction. In addition, DfID has already announced that it is doubling its aid to Nigeria. Her Majesty's Government believe that it is important to support the ownership, sovereign right and accountability of the Nigerian elected government in their policy choices.
	A fundamental conclusion of the Commission for Africa, fully supported by the UK, was that Africa must steer the course of its own development. African leaders at Gleneagles embraced this new vision for the continent's future, recognising the opportunities and their role in addressing its challenges, including peace, security and governance, to which my noble friend Lady Whitaker referred.
	After the success of Gleneagles, the Government looked to the UN Millennium Review Summit held in New York last September to keep up the momentum. The need for urgency on all sides was underlined, as was the need for developing countries to produce more ambitious national strategies to combat poverty. The UK's development objectives for the summit were largely met. Importantly, there was also agreement on responsibility to protect and the establishment of the new Peacebuilding Commission.
	As noble Lords have emphasised, notwithstanding these agreements, the international community is still failing people in Darfur. The situation there is abhorrent. Today's report from the International Development Committee is a powerful critique. Her Majesty's Government have been leading efforts in this area and must continue to do so by providing humanitarian help; making sure that the AU force comes up to its full strength; maximising pressure on the parties to co-operate; and supporting the transition of the AU mission to a UN peace support operation, if agreed by AU Foreign Ministers. I assure noble Lords, however, that we will maintain our focus on Darfur even when the television cameras have left.
	If we are to see an end to poverty, it is crucial that all the pledges on development in Africa made at the G8 summit are implemented rapidly. I am pleased to report that there has already been considerable progress in a number of areas, including donor pledges to replenish the global fund to fight AIDS, TB and malaria by US$3.7 billion for 2006–07; the launch of the Infrastructure Consortium for Africa, to which the UK has committed US$20 million over two years; and the launch of the Investment Climate Facility to which we are contributing US$30 million over three years.
	There is still much to be done on trade. The noble Earl mentioned Economic Partnership Agreements and his fear that they will undermine development. The Government have been working very hard to promote the development aspects of Economic Partnership Agreements, and we believe that they will now truly deliver for developing countries. As my noble friend Lord Sewel pointed out so graphically, we have to work with people on the ground who are affected by development policies when we devise and implement them.
	In response to my noble friend's point about sugar, DfID has made £260,000 available for sugar protocol countries in the Caribbean to help prepare their country plans on how they will use the EU's transitional assistance. That is a very small part of what we are doing and I shall write to my noble friend with further information.
	At Gleneagles, G8 leaders reiterated their political commitment to an ambitious outcome to the WTO's ongoing Doha development round. We were disappointed by the outcome although some progress was made. A fair opportunity to trade is not enough, so the UK is committed to tripling the amount of aid for trade that we provide to developing countries to £100 million a year by 2010. We will continue to work with our partners this year to ensure an ambitious and pro-poor outcome to the Doha round. Some key players are meeting this week in the margins of the World Economic Forum in Davos to discuss the next steps this year. We await the outcome of these discussions. I am afraid that I have no further information about a possible meeting of heads of state but I truly hope that it will take place in the near future.
	In 2005 we did not see an end to poverty but we did see the promises needed to help bring about that end. Donors and African countries alike recognise the need for an effective forum to monitor, review and report progress against these commitments. That is why it was agreed that the Africa Partnership Forum should be strengthened to carry out this role. The forum brings together representatives from Africa at the national, regional and pan-African level, as well as the continent's major development partners. It will monitor progress against the commitments made in 2005 by Africa and its development partners on the basis of a joint action plan now being developed. The support unit being set up to enable the forum to carry out its responsibilities will work closely with the African Union and the New Partnership for Africa's Development.
	The joint action plan will set benchmarks. There was a meeting of AFP co-ordinators in London early this month to draw up an action plan. It is now being circulated to the members for agreement at the next meeting in April. APF will monitor, review and report on progress towards commitments made in 2005 by Africa and the donor governments.
	As my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for International Development announced on 19 December, he has placed in the Libraries of both Houses a Gleneagles implementation plan for Africa. This sets out what has already been achieved and the Government's views on the key milestones that need to be achieved on Africa and development in the next 12 months following the Gleneagles summit. The plan will be updated monthly as further progress is made. One of the milestones, of course, includes agreement by the heads of state, at a UN GA special session on AIDS, on a road map to universal access to AIDS treatment by 2010.
	My noble friend Lord Foulkes and other noble Lords referred to our consultation paper on eliminating world poverty and the forthcoming White Paper. I trust that many of the issues raised in today's discussion will be addressed in that White Paper. The consultation is an extremely important process because the ideas of NGOs, Churches, trade unions, business and other interested groups will help the Government in preparing their new development plans. We recognise that the Government certainly do not have a monopoly on ideas.
	As to Ethiopia, of course the situation there presents the Government with tough decisions. But good governance, human rights and accountability must be respected. Although we have withdrawn our general budget support, the UK remains committed to supporting poor people in Ethiopia. We are therefore working with other donors and the government to design a new mechanism for providing funds, using government channels in a more transparent and accountable way, so that basic services such as education, health and water can continue to be provided throughout the country and we can be sure that aid will reach those who need it.
	As my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer has said, 2005 is remembered as the start of something, not the end. We have not yet made poverty history but we have made a good start. Now we must work together with developing countries and other donors to deliver the historic commitments made last year. In that way we can and we will make a real difference to the lives of the poorest and most needy people in the world. That is not just morally right, it is in our common interests to do so.

Baroness Jay of Paddington: My Lords, I am grateful to all those who have taken part in this excellent debate and grateful to the Minister for her comprehensive and on the whole rather encouraging reply. As usual in your Lordships' House, I have been overwhelmed by the diversity of expertise and experience which your Lordships have brought to bear on this problem. Against that background of diversity, it is very hard to bring out any common themes without sounding somewhat platitudinous and being obvious. However, it is worth repeating that one common theme underlying the whole debate has been the general agreement that the issue of aid and development must stay at the top of the international agenda for governments, civil society and for all of us involved in the legislative and political process. In addition, we must do that not for reasons of morality or charity, although they are very important, but because this is about justice and security for the whole global community.
	What is the way forward? The most often used words in the debate were "coherence", "transparency", "accountability" and, above all, "partnership". That has been re-emphasised again in the Minister's reply. I look forward to further opportunities to scrutinise the White Paper, to scrutinise again the commitments of last year and to consider the Bill proposed by my right honourable friend Mr Clarke when it reaches your Lordships' House. Meanwhile, I beg leave to withdraw the Motion for Papers.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Central European Time

Viscount Montgomery of Alamein: rose to ask Her Majesty's Government when they will consider adopting Central European Time.
	My Lords, before embarking on the substance of the debate, I take the opportunity to thank many noble Lords who warmly welcomed me back after my six-year gap and, more particularly, my noble friends on the Cross Benches, who not only encouraged me to put my name forward in the by-election but actually voted for me.
	As I turn to this important question, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Sainsbury, for agreeing to have this short debate tonight. As I have no right to reply at the end, I also thank all noble Lords who are going to speak in it.
	This is not a new issue. As has been pointed out on previous occasions, it is a perennial issue. As recently as last November, in response to a question by my noble friend Lord Tanlaw, the Minister described it as a "poisoned chalice". I am rather surprised that he should think that; as someone who has a second home in France, I rather like to think of it as a good quality wine, which we need to imbibe regularly, and that we need to pursue the matter until we get the right answer. So I am afraid that we may return to the issue again from time it time. I have been involved with it myself for a very long time, as have other noble Lords. In 1995, I introduced a Bill entitled the Western European Time Bill. I thought that it was a better name for the Bill at that time, as one can hardly describe France and Spain as countries in central Europe. But I suppose that that is a detail.
	The main arguments in favour of the change have been rehearsed time and time again, but they can be repeated from time to time. First, and most importantly, there is the matter of traffic accidents. It is well identified now that some 50 per cent more traffic fatalities take place in the school rush hour in the evenings rather than in the mornings, because people are fresh in the mornings and tired in the afternoons. So on the matter of fatalities, there is a well established case for decreasing traffic fatalities, especially among children, by going over to having lighter evenings and not minding so much about darker mornings.
	Then there is trade, for which the noble Lord, Lord Sainsbury, has specific responsibly. We conduct well over 50 per cent of our trade with Europe and most trade organisations are in favour of aligning ourselves on a better and more equivalent time frame.
	The fact is that British businessmen make nine times more trips to Europe than they do to the United States—a high ratio. It is not possible to reach Paris by train for a nine o'clock meeting; it requires an overnight stop. This would all change if we were on the same timescale and things could be organised differently.
	I realise that there are many objections to this proposal, and they have been rehearsed from time to time. Mostly these objections come from Scotland. I do not know whether we can go on having the tail wag the dog indefinitely. Perhaps that is a difficult situation when we have a Prime Minister and various other members of the Cabinet who come from that part of the world. Certainly something needs to be done about it. My noble friend Lord Tanlaw has, in this connection, put down a Bill to repatriate this issue to Scotland, as they have an independent parliament. I understand that he hopes that this might be heard sometime towards Easter.
	I have another suggestion. We could make things easier for people in the north-west if we had differential and preferential electricity tariffs, which would give more light in the dark hours in the morning. This is not impossible. In France, they have a quite different tariff for electricity in the small hours of the morning, in the latter part of the night. This is really an organisational and administrative matter, which produces huge benefits to a lot of electricity consumers. That could surely be achieved in this country as well. I have mentioned this matter in previous private discussion with the noble Lord, Lord Sainsbury. I do not expect him necessarily to be able to comment on that yet, but perhaps he could give it consideration.
	In 1998, in another debate on this subject, it was suggested and agreed that there should be a review of this whole subject. So far as I am aware, that review has never taken place and is well overdue in view of the overwhelming support that this proposal has in many quarters. I therefore hope that the Minister will reconsider this whole matter—which is what I have put down in my Question—although I realise that it is more in hope than in expectation.

Lord Berkeley: My Lords, in supporting this Motion, it is right to first welcome the noble Viscount, Lord Montgomery, back not only to the House but also to debates on Central European Time, or whatever he wants to call it. There is a small body of noble Lords here who have been speaking about this for years. One or two oppose it, one of whom is behind me. He cannot oppose it that much or he might have put his name down to speak.
	Again as the noble Viscount said—

Lord Howie of Troon: My Lords, the horse has been flogged so often that it is now dead and should not be stirred.

Lord Berkeley: Even if you get cheap electricity in Troon at night, my Lords?
	I started off, looking at this again, by going back to two excellent publications from the Policy Studies Institute—by Mayer Hillman, who has again been writing on it for years—which clearly set out the pros and cons of moving the clocks. What is interesting is the fact that in debating the Road Safety Bill quite recently we discovered a little more information about statistics and the Department for Transport's view. In a 1996 paper, the Transport Road Research Laboratory confirmed that in experiments of the late 1960s—a long time ago now—there was a reduction of 230 in the number of road fatalities.
	In Committee on the Road Safety Bill on 8 June, I was pleased to see a quote from Tomorrow's Roads: Safer for Everyone, 2000, the government paper on roads. In case we have forgotten it, it stated:
	"The conclusion was that this"—
	the change of time—
	"might save over 100 deaths per year and taken together with serious injuries save well over 400 . . . casualties".
	It concludes:
	"A saving of this magnitude is something we must take seriously".
	If one attaches to those fatalities the value for preventable fatality the Government use for road and rail deaths, that is a saving of £150 million a year, which I suggest is well worth having.
	It is good to see that my noble friend Lord Sainsbury will respond tonight. When he answered a Starred Question on 4 April this year from the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, asking how many lives could be saved by moving to Central European Time, he said:
	"I am not certain whether it would have any impact".—[Official Report, 4/4/05; col. 478.]
	Now he knows what the impact would be, and I am sure that if he is asked that question again he might give a different answer.
	With regard to the Road Safety Bill, I was pleased by the response of the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, to an amendment seeking to achieve much the same as today's debate. My noble friend said that the change in time would be a major contribution to road safety. It is good that he knows that. He then went on to say that road safety is not the only issue and that it was the Department of Trade and Industry's responsibility, which is why my noble friend Lord Sainsbury is sitting on the Front Bench today, and will answer.
	Who is against this? The noble Viscount said there was a lot of interest in Scotland against it, but if one trawls press cuttings about this, which tend to be from early November every year, there is clearly debate. Some people are in favour of it and some are against. Professor David Begg, who until recently was chairman of the Commission for Integrated Transport, and comes from Edinburgh and Aberdeen, confirmed that this change would save 100 deaths and 350 serious injuries. He was criticised by one or two farmers, but then he pointed out that there are not many farmers whose cows stay outside in winter, and anyway the cows have a clock, and it is possible to have electric light. The debate goes on quite a lot further on that.
	I agree with the noble Viscount that from the business point of view it is extremely irritating being an hour behind the rest of Europe. I went to Brussels yesterday and had to get up at five o'clock in the morning to catch a Eurostar train, and did not get to my meeting until 10. At this time of year it is quite cold, but that is not the point. We are at a disadvantage compared with people coming here from the Continent, and that should be taken into account.
	Given that the PSI concluded that, as the noble Viscount has said, opinion polls have found that a substantial majority of the population is in favour, not just from transport, but from industry, tourism, leisure and all organisations involved in trade, travel, communications and the provision of sport, recreation and cultural facilities, as well as bodies representing vulnerable social groups, including children, women and the elderly—I apologise for the length of that list—I have to ask my noble friend: who is against this? That is a pretty good list of people who are in favour of it. One hundred and fifty million pounds would be saved from reduced accidents every year. The Department for Transport states that that is not the only consideration, but, given those other results from these reports, I hope that the Minister will tell us where in the UK this enormous groundswell of opposition to a simple change is located and what are the Government's reasons for preventing it.

Lord Howe of Aberavon: My Lords, has the noble Lord borne in mind conditions in a country as large as the People's Republic of China, which has one time zone for the entire country? I found myself on one occasion in the north-west province of Xinjing, coming out of a cinema show at about midnight still in daylight. The relatively small minority which was affected, rather as in Scotland, accommodated themselves to that by getting up at different times and going to bed at different times. It is not a major adjustment to seek for the benefit of the mass of the population.

Lord Berkeley: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord for his intervention.
	I go back to the road safety casualties. If everybody arranged their schools and businesses to start an hour earlier and we kept the same time, it would have the same effect. We either change our getting-up and going-to-bed habits or we change the clocks if we are going to gain the benefit of reducing accidents. Nobody has shown much sign of wishing to change their normal patterns of business life or schools or anything else.

Lord St John of Bletso: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Montgomery for introducing this debate. I warmly welcome him back in your Lordships' House. My noble friend has a long-standing reputation in this House for being an expert on Latin America, but he has been a seasoned campaigner in calling for adopting Central European Time. I commend him for the clarity with which he presented the case for change and declare right at the outset that I am a wholehearted supporter of his call for change.
	I am sorry that my noble friend Lord Tanlaw, with his vast technical knowledge on this subject, was unable to participate in today's debate. I was half-expecting the noble Lord, Lord Howie of Troon, to speak, as he has long campaigned for the status quo. He has said on many occasions that he hoped that it would be the final time that this case would be raised in your Lordships' House and that it should be put to rest once and for all. I can assure the noble Lord that it will not be put to rest once and for all.

Lord Howie of Troon: My Lords, when my old friend Lord Montgomery returned to this House, I was overjoyed, until I realised that he would raise this subject once again, at which point my face fell.

Viscount Montgomery of Alamein: My Lords, I am so sorry the noble Lord feels that.

Lord St John of Bletso: My Lords, the arguments for and against maintaining British Summer Time throughout the year are well rehearsed. Frankly, there is not much more that one can say than is already mentioned in the House of Commons Library Standard Note of November last year. I have no doubt that the Minister, when winding up this debate, will draw reference to the previous experiment with lighter evenings between 1968 and 1971 and tell us that this proved unpopular and was abandoned following a vote in Parliament. We are all well versed in the objections from the construction industry and many of those who live in the north of England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. My simple message is that a lot has changed since 1971—in trade; in financial services; with our European partners; in schools; in law and order, tourism and communications—which gives more momentum to the argument for more serious consideration to be given to the call for us to keep British Summer Time throughout the year.
	I was not surprised that the lighter evenings Bill of 2004, moved by the honourable Nigel Beard in another place, failed. It was impractical to expect the Bill to succeed when it applied only to England and Wales. However, it raised a number of powerful arguments and quantifiable benefits for the United Kingdom's competitiveness and business efficiency. Nigel Beard argued that airline, ferry and Eurostar schedules would be simpler. He referred to the 25 million inbound visitors in 2003, 14 million of whom came from countries that would have been in the same time zone under his Bill.
	My noble friend Lord Montgomery made reference to the reduction in the number of fatalities and serious injuries on the roads. I wholeheartedly support this case. As a father of four young children, all aged under 11, I have particularly strong feelings about my children's inability to play sport on the onset of dusk in the winter. A switch to CET would give an average daily gain of 55 minutes of accessible daylight hours in the evenings—as is well known, half of the 10 most popular sports are daylight-dependent.
	At a time when energy efficiency is getting more and more attention, it is noteworthy that the winter months generally see the consumption of electricity increasing by about 50 per cent and the consumption of gas increasing by 400 per cent. While the 1989 Green Paper Summer Time: A Consultation Document concluded that a move to CET would result in marginal energy savings, I feel that the issue needs to be looked at again. It has been claimed that changes to British Summer Time could be used to help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Does the Minister have any further information on this point?
	The late Lord Jenkins of Hillhead had strong feelings in favour of our remaining on British Summer Time throughout the year. In the debate on the issue in your Lordships' House way back in January 1995, he argued:
	"Sensible decisions on time zones are essentially a matter of longitude and not of latitude. The division should go east-west with longitude and not north-south with latitude".
	He concluded his speech by saying that,
	"we should do better from the point of view of safety, amenity, convenience and efficiency with the day slung later both in summer and winter".—[Official Report, 11/01/95; col. 250.]

Lord Howie of Troon: My Lords, I am sorry to keep interrupting, but, on the question of latitude, if you look at the map, you will notice that it is not Britain that is out of sync, but France and Spain. Because of their latitude, they should be on our time zone, not we on theirs.

Lord St John of Bletso: My Lords, I am well versed in this issue. The European Union spans 34 degrees of latitude, whereas, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe, mentioned, China spans almost 65 degrees. I wholeheartedly support the points that Lord Jenkins made.
	This idea is not, as some critics have claimed, London-centric. I was pleased that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe, intervened to refer to China, where, as he rightly said, there is one time zone, which extends from Shanghai practically to Samarkand. As he said, people in China cope very well indeed.
	The House of Commons research note says that bringing the United Kingdom in line with Central European Time will almost certainly increase communication with the rest of the EU, since more of the working day would coincide. I am reminded of the statistic given by the CBI, which claimed that, in communication terms, there is practically—with lunchtimes—only four hours of telephone contact between us and the rest of Europe.
	I sincerely hope that the Government will not just pay lip service to our cause to alter the present summer time arrangements. I hope that they will give serious consideration to initiating an in-depth study analysing the options for change.

Lord Addington: My Lords, first, I must tell the noble Viscount, Lord Montgomery, that when the Minister described this issue as being a "poisoned chalice", it was in response to my description of it as a "hardy perennial". The question before us is whether to feed this hardy perennial or chop it right back.
	I have come rather later to this discussion than many other people, but I have heard the arguments and it simply seems to be a matter of usage and custom. We can do either. It is not beyond the wit of man either to stay as we are or to change. We can do either if we have the will, and the will is based on our convenience. The argument is that lighter mornings are more appealing. I lived a student life for four years and experienced early mornings in Scotland but, for much of the time, whether or not it was light in the mornings was not a big issue for me. However, people liked the idea of getting up and seeing some sunlight. On an overcast day in the north-east of Scotland, sunlight was a fleeting quality, but that was the idea.
	For most modern activities, light towards the end of the day is clearly more useful. The noble Lord, Lord St John, has just raised the issue of sport. Going back to my time in the north-east of Scotland, I can remember sports matches being cancelled because we were five minutes late kicking off and, if the rain came down, you could not see anything. That lack of light—generally the further north you are during the depths of winter, the worse it is—is a subject that you can dance around, but only so many hours of light are available, and it is the best usage that you can make of them that seems to be at the back of this.
	A friend of mine who at one point did quite a lot of business with the Continent described the difficulties of the time difference when he tried to chase people up. He said, "You get to your office nice and early and phone someone else who arrives at their office nice and early only to be told, 'You've just missed him'. You ask when he is going to be there and are told, 'I'm not sure. He's in and out'. You ask, 'When's the best time to get him?' and are told, 'Just before lunch'. Then you forget that his lunch doesn't coincide with your lunch. You chase around making phone calls and eventually you might just catch up". I am reliably informed that being that little bit out of sync is an incredible nuisance. Stronger language is probably required in relation to the level of nuisance but it does make life difficult.
	If Scotland were to keep its own time zone, we might have the same degree of difficulty in talking to people there. I am not sure what would cause more inconvenience, but it is one of the options that we have. There is no reason why we could not make the change, but the question is: is it simply impractical and, to put it bluntly, is it worth the hassle? We can chase around the question forever but we will always be addressing this one central point. What is most convenient for us? Would a change give us something better?
	When he replies, the Minister will probably have to take certain things into account. For example, statistics suggest that in certain areas more lives might be saved in regard to road accidents. That is one question that I do not want to see tested for the simple reason that I do not want to have X number of corpses on the street. When visiting hospitals, I do not want to hear people say, "It didn't work". It is just one of those things that I find rather awkward to comprehend. Also, as the noble Viscount said, if people are more tired and accidents occur when they are driving, the roads will be lit anyway. So there is doubt in that regard.
	When dealing with a problem such as this, we have to decide what is manageable, how much time and energy we are prepared to invest in it and, it is hoped, reach a decision. I know that the noble Viscount will not let this matter go. Of course he is entitled to bring it back again and again, but I think that the rest of us should think about it and decide whether or not we are going to deal with it. If we are not prepared to put in the effort to deal with it, we should leave it for a while.

Lord De Mauley: My Lords, I thank the noble Viscount, Lord Montgomery of Alamein, for initiating this debate. Although it may sound rather impudent of me as I arrived in your Lordships' House only about five minutes before his return, I echo the welcome extended to him by other noble Lords.
	To deal with the main arguments as I understand them, I have divided them into about eight key areas. First, as the noble Viscount, Lord Montogomery, and the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, said, there are potential benefits for road safety, especially for school children, from a change to Central European Time. When the change was tried between 1968 and 1971, the number of fatalities and injuries dropped. The main beneficiaries were those aged from five to 15. The experiment was abandoned because of an accident in the early morning in Scotland involving schoolchildren, which is the very type of accident that can be used so powerfully to advocate lighter evenings. It was, however, an isolated example. We might ask whether countries such as Germany and Poland—using the logic of this argument at least, they would be on eastern European time—have considered a change from a road safety perspective. Presumably they remain on Central European Time because of the European Union, economic arguments and so on.
	Secondly, as has been mentioned in earlier debates on this subject, there could possibly be a reduction in crime, resulting from a change to Central European Time because it is argued that criminals prosper on dark evenings. Thirdly, possible energy savings could arise from lighter winter afternoons. That would be a saving not only of money but of the undesirable by-products of energy generation. We would, however, need rigorous scientific evidence that the benefits so gained would not be offset by the additional energy costs arising from darker and colder mornings when we get up and arrive at work.
	There is a physical electricity supply link between England and France, known as the Interconnector, through which electricity is sold in each direction at different times of the day, dependent on demand. Peak demand occurs in England at a different time from France, partly because our time systems are an hour apart. That clearly has the potential to contribute towards electricity costs both on revenue and capital accounts to the extent that it may actually reduce the need to maintain generating capacity.

Lord Berkeley: My Lords, I think that the noble Lord will find that when the link was built it was designed to do as he said, but in recent years it has been used for one-way traffic only—importing good French nuclear electricity into this country.

Lord De Mauley: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for his intervention. I was building up to a question for the Minister. Will he tell us whether a move to Central European Time would impact on the electricity cost savings to the UK, made possible by the Interconnector? If so, by how much? Will we need more or less generating capacity if we are on Central European Time?
	Fourthly, some of the costs of trade and travel might be saved by a change to Central European Time. The cost of British Airways planes staying overnight in continental airports is an example. As the noble Viscount, Lord Montgomery, mentioned, there is also the possibility of a reduction in the cost of overnight stays for people who do business with mainland Europe if they are able to catch the early train or plane in time to make a meeting in Paris or Berlin that morning. However, to the extent that we would be making it easier to do business in France and Germany, while acknowledging that those countries may be economically more significant than Portugal and southern Ireland, it might have the opposite effect for people doing business with those countries.
	We ought to ask how businessmen cope with the time difference between Lisbon and Madrid, Stockholm and Helsinki, or Chicago and Detroit, to name but a few comparisons where there is a similar time difference. My point is to emphasise that a move to Central European Time should not be seen as a magical solution to all our problems. A move needs to be very carefully thought through to avoid creating unforeseen problems. Equally, I am not yet convinced by the argument that we currently have only four hours during each day when we can speak on the telephone to those on the Continent. A change to Central European Time would give us an increase of one hour, which by my calculations is 17 per cent, in the time available to talk to Europe, but would result in a 25 per cent reduction in the time available to talk to people even on the east coast of America.
	America remains—or it was in 2003, which is the latest year for which I have figures—the biggest single country in terms of share of UK exports, with £29 billion in goods and a considerable sum in services. In addition, north America accounted for more than £11 billion of investment into the UK for the year 2003–04, while the whole of the EU generated £2.5 billion less, or 23 per cent less, with a total of £8.5 billion. I am not saying that our minds should be closed on the matter, but it would be a disaster to put any of that, with the jobs and associated economic prosperity that comes with it, at risk without carefully considering the consequences.
	Fifthly, there has been a suggestion in earlier debates on this subject that farmers and others who work out of doors would benefit from a change. As a farmer's son, I am confident that farmers, like all small businessmen, are flexible. They base their working day on when it is light, not on the more arbitrary clock. Do we suppose for one moment that farmers, even in Xinjiang province in western China, wait to milk their cows until the farmers in Manchuria, several thousand miles east, get up—even though they are forced, as my noble and learned friend Lord Howe of Aberavon mentioned, to adopt the same time zone? That would be in the middle of their period of daylight.
	Sixthly, as the noble Lords, Lord St John of Bletso and Lord Addington, suggested, there are the potential benefits, including to health, to people arising from more daylight after school and work to pursue sporting activities. The vastly increased proportion of people who nowadays find it convenient to exercise before they go to work should equally be borne in mind, however. Many people take their run then, because they find that it energises them for the day. If we moved to Central European Time, these people might suffer. Those who finish work at five or later would, in any event, hardly benefit at all, because it would still be dark for most of the winter.
	Seventhly, it has been argued that there are benefits to tourism and leisure activities arising from a change. I see the argument, but I am sceptical that one extra hour will make a huge difference to the sorts of leisure and tourism activities—perhaps setting aside the outdoor fitness activities I have just referred to—that people are able to undertake on winter afternoons.
	Eighthly in the order in which I have listed them—but by no means so low in order of importance—as the noble Viscount, Lord Montgomery of Alamein, said, a conundrum is presented by Scotland in the context of a change to Central European Time. Time is not a devolved matter under the Scotland Act 1998. Perhaps, in retrospect, that was an oversight. On one hand, if Scotland were to join the rest of the United Kingdom in changing, it would mean that those at the western and northern extremes would spend a considerable part of the first half of each winter's day in darkness; on the other hand, if Scotland were able to, and did, opt out, it would introduce between Scotland and England all the inconveniences the change had been intended to remove between England and the continental mainland. Assuming Northern Ireland followed England and Wales, it would have a similar problem in its dealings with southern Ireland.
	In conclusion, nothing that we mere mortals can do will give us more daylight. The question is only whether we should shift our clocks so that we have more of that limited resource in the morning or in the afternoon. Indeed, the proposition before us today is specifically whether we should consider trading in one hour of daylight in the morning for one in the evening.
	Before we rush into change, we could do worse than carefully examine, from all perspectives, why the Portuguese have changed to Central European Time and back again—much more recently than we did. According to the Financial Times, they changed to Central European Time in 1992 because it was considered essential for their participation in European monetary union. They changed back again in 1996 because, according to the Financial Times, public opinion had grown increasingly incensed over a move that many considered to have taken a toll on the country's health, wealth and peace of mind. It was said to have been an economic mistake, although, admittedly, the reasons included that Portugal is further west than we are, and that Britain and America were more important to its economy than the rest of Europe. Those reasons are—with the exception of America—less relevant to us.
	Subject to the Minister's answer to some of the questions raised today, it still sounds on balance that there might be a case for considering a change to our timing system, if that consideration should be based on a thorough, wide and public consultation, the emphasis of which should be on safety, health and economics—the review suggested by the noble Viscount, Lord Montgomery of Alamein. Such a consultation should not be confined to whether we should simply move to Central European Time, but should consider other options, such as—as the noble Lord, Lord St John of Bletso, suggested—simply adopting British Summer Time all year round, which would obviate the need to alter all our clocks twice a year.
	The noble Viscount, Lord Montgomery of Alamein, is to be congratulated on initiating this debate. The small number of participants is compensated for by the quality of the arguments on all sides. This will have been useful in giving the House an opportunity to air the issues in advance of the Second Reading of the Lighter Evenings (Experiment) Bill, introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, in November last year.

Lord Sainsbury of Turville: My Lords, I am delighted to be taking part in this debate today. I welcome the noble Viscount, Lord Montgomery, back to the House. He has presented some interesting arguments for the adoption of Central European Time. I thank him for that and I thank other noble Lords for contributing to the debate.
	As noble Lords are aware, the topic of introducing lighter evenings is raised from time to time and we have all heard the many arguments for and against a change to the current arrangements. These usually surface at the time the clocks go back and we are faced with the gloomy prospect of darker evenings. In a previous speech, I described this as a poisoned chalice. In the end, it comes down to a simple debate between those who work early in the morning versus those who put more importance on activities during the evening. Therefore, it is a classic case of a no-win, no-win situation. Of course, any change would have to take full regard of a wide range of factors, including the impact on social and community life, transport links with other countries, health and safety issues, such as road traffic accidents, and the views of the business community and other stakeholders.
	Furthermore, from recent contact with stakeholders representing both business and workers there is little enthusiasm for change, with some being strongly opposed. The history of change is not encouraging, and I do not apologise for repeating it. If flogged horses are brought back to the House again and again, one must tolerate flogged arguments also being brought back with great regularity.
	From 1968 to 1971, the British Standard Time experiment was carried out. Continuous summer time—in other words GMT plus one hour—was adopted through the year to test public opinion. Objections were raised by the farming and construction industries and others involved in outdoor work, such as postal workers and milkmen, particularly in the north of England and in Scotland. They experienced difficulties because of the late sunrise in winter. Following a vote in Parliament, the experiment was abandoned.
	A few years later, opinion on a possible move to Central European Time was canvassed in a 1989 Green Paper. Responses to the Green Paper revealed the divergence of opinion that existed on these issues. In 1996, a Private Member's Bill proposed the introduction of single/double summer time but it demonstrated that strong views remained, so the Bill failed to secure sufficient support in Parliament to proceed. More recently, Nigel Beard MP introduced the Lighter Evenings Bill on 8 June 2004. The Bill proposed to advance time by one hour in England and Wales throughout the year—in effect, moving to double summer time—and to provide that the power to make decisions in relation to time zones in Northern Ireland and Scotland be devolved to the Northern Ireland Assembly and the Scottish Parliament for connective purposes. The Bill was due for its Second Reading on 15 October 2004, but because it was listed 10th on the order of business, it did not receive its reading. In any case, the Government would have opposed the Bill on the grounds that there was no compelling new evidence to suggest it was worth doing. I do not think that the situation in the country has changed that much from those earlier experiments.
	The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, asked where the opposition is. It is very clear where it is. A move to Central European Time is likely to prove very unpopular with farmers, outdoor workers and the elderly in the north of England and Scotland, who raised strong objections during the 1968 to 1971 experiment. The adoption of Central European Time would result in Scottish and northern farmers working longer hours in darkness, which has implications for both the efficiency of an important sector in the Scottish economy and the safety of those employed in it. Another group who feel very strongly about that is our postal workers.
	A change would also have an adverse effect on Northern Ireland because of its land boundary with the Republic of Ireland and the effect on cross-border transport and communication links. I would say to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe, if he were here, that it is all very well talking about China, but one of the great advantages of a communist country is that one does not have to consult the people's views on such matters; people simply have to adapt to the changes. I do not think that in this country we should adopt that as a way of dealing with public opinion.
	A number of arguments are regularly put forward in support of a change to the summer time arrangement. As far as I am concerned, by far the most important of those is that darker evenings increase the amount of deaths and serious injuries on our roads. I do now know what the facts are. It is calculated that a change would save about 100 deaths and 300 serious injuries. That is a very important issue, but it has to be put in the context of the other issues and we should not lose sight of the fact that changing the summer time arrangements would have an impact wider than the road safety issue, important though that is.
	A further argument is that it may be a commercial disadvantage to remain with the current situation. However, there has been no strong push from business to make this change, which would suggest that it is content with the current system. Furthermore, a change could have a negative impact on our trade with the Republic of Ireland and Portugal, for example.
	The noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, also argued that a move to Central European Time would give older people more confidence to stay out later with less fear of crime. The truth is that a move to Central European Time would only result in a change in the hours of darkness; it would not shorten them. Therefore, it is reasonable to suppose that a criminal wishing to commit an offence under cover of darkness would still do so; he would simply alter the time at which he did it. Assaults and thefts from postal workers increase markedly from summer to winter due to dark mornings, a situation that could only be worsened by imposing extra hours of darkness.
	Another argument for change is that it would boost the morale and health of the country and reduce cases of seasonal affective disorder. It is very possible that we would all benefit mentally and physically from a change to lighter evenings and that the mood of the nation could be improved. However, the impact of longer, darker mornings should not be underestimated, especially in the north and in Scotland. For some people, they can have as demoralising an effect as longer, darker evenings. We should not underestimate the fact that climate as much as lack of light precludes outdoor activities in winter. An active lifestyle is arguably more encouraged by a warmer evening, rather than a lighter evening. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, that those people who run in the morning should also have their rights on this issue.
	The noble Lords, Lord St John of Bletso and Lord De Mauley, raised the prospect of saving energy through a change in the summer time arrangements. It is widely believed that a move to lighter evenings could potentially save energy, although research by the Building Research Establishment suggested that energy use would increase due to people leaving lights on all day after switching them on because of dark mornings. However, it is now likely that the effect on energy consumption of a change to the summer time arrangements would be neutral as people become more conscious of the environmental and cost benefits of energy saving.
	Finally, the noble Viscount, Lord Montgomery, suggested that if a move to Central European Time has an adverse effect on the Scots, they could be appeased by having differential electricity tariffs. The supply of electricity and gas is a fully competitive sector and tariff setting is not for the Government or the regulator. It is an interesting idea, but I fear that delivering it would prove very difficult. For instance, do we have just one discount for the whole of Scotland, or should the discount be greater the further north one goes? If Berwick benefits, what do we say to people in Newcastle? How long does the discount last—November to March, or just the long winter days? Finally, for any subvention, the money has to be found from somewhere and governments are committed to not intervening in energy markets. With rising prices, I am not sure that people in the rest of the country would be pleased to pay higher bills in order for people in Scotland to pay lower ones.
	To conclude, although we have heard some plausible arguments for a change, I do not believe that there is a strong public or business desire for change to our existing arrangements. The present position is a satisfactory compromise between those who prefer lighter mornings and those who prefer lighter evenings. Therefore, I cannot see the Government adopting Central European Time in the foreseeable future.

House adjourned at four minutes after six o'clock.
	Thursday, 26 January 2006.